🎵🎵🎵 Down by the Bay… of Kotor
The Bay of Kotor is gorgeous, and all around the entire perimeter, you find cute town after cute town. Most are incredibly tiny, some with no amenities, just houses. But some are slightly bigger and have a restaurant or two. Once you get further away from Kotor, you find other larger towns, as well. We wanted to get out and explore a bunch of these areas. Mostly, we did this by foot as we love to walk and the walk along the Bay was just breathtaking! But a couple were several hours walk away, which was just not feasible, and we explored by car.
Pretty much directly across the Bay was a small town with an incredibly cute little family-run hotel and restaurant, Restaurant Bokeljski Dvori, complete with their resident cat Garfield, who truly looked like his namesake! The views here were stunning and the food was outstanding! It was a little over an hour to walk there, which was perfect for us! I discovered the most delicious dish here. It’s a typical Montenegran dish that’s everywhere, but the first time I tried it was here. They rolled a thin pork cutlet around their local prosciutto and cheese, thinly breaded it, cooked it, and then topped it with a scoop of kajmak for serving. One of the best meals I’ve eaten in a long time!
In the other direction, we found another place, Restaurant Bar Premier that we frequented which was about an hour’s walk to get to. Perfect distance to get a walk-in, have a coffee on their waterfront patio and then head back to Kotor again. The one Serbian waiter we had was great to chat with. Well, we mostly just listened. He explained a lot about life in the Balkans in general and Montenegro in particular. It was fascinating to hear about the political history, including during the war in the 1990s and the splitting of the former Yugoslavia into various countries. We felt like we learned a lot about the country and its history, most of which we were ignorant of before our trip here. While we typically turned back after stopping here for a cappuccino, the first time we just stopped here as an interim point and then kept walking. We explored a waterfall area and walked through a few little towns, before stopping to have some lunch and then walking back to Kotor.
During our walk further beyond Orahovac, we hoped to stop at Kraken, an Underwater Wine Experience. It was closed that first time, but we made a return trip another time when it was open. It was the most unique wine experience we have ever had! They pick you up in a motorboat and bring you to their floating bar on the Bay of Kotor. Once you choose the wine you want to drink, they pull up the milk crate it is stored in on the sea floor. The wines are aged and stored 20 metres deep in the water for a minimum of one year to age. They have thousands of bottles down there, and divers will go down to move wine from the sea floor into the crates as needed to hoist up and serve to guests. We picked out a bottle of white and a bottle of rose, the rose being our favourite. We also ordered some amazing appetizers to go with our tastings. We spent a long time out on the floating bar drinking in both the delicious wine but also the warm sunshine and outstanding views. Eventually, we corked the wine to bring back to Kotor and went back to land. It was a very fun experience and one of our favourite memories from Kotor already.
We took a car trip up to Perast one day, which is a quaint little touristy town. It was quite small, with one waterfront street that stretched several blocks as the main heart of the town. We of course stopped at a café for a coffee and cake. They had a traditional Perast almond cake, which we felt like we needed to try. It was delicious! Our understanding is that they were prepared by women to send off with their sea-faring menfolk, as they would keep out at sea for a while and would also help fill bellies. The cakes were so light and delicious, that I’m not sure about filling the bellies. But heck, I’ll become a seafarer if it means I get sent off with cake like that every time I leave home!
We stopped in a shop that sold pomegranate wine, thinking we needed to give this a try. We sampled all kinds of local red wines, pomegranate and other fruit wines, and some fruit liqueurs. All of which were made in Montenegro. Everything was delicious! We bought a small bottle of pomegranate wine and a big bottle of cherry liqueur. And have I mentioned how much Europe utterly adores children enough yet? Today was another in a long list of experiences with this. As soon as we walked in and he saw our kids, he immediately cut a HUGE slice of cake. He was going to cut more, but we told him one was plenty for the kids to share, seeing as how we had just finished eating almond cake at the café! The kids happily sat and devoured some cake while we did our wine tasting. I think they managed to eat about half! When we were done and had made our purchase, he asked the girls what their favourite juice was. Our girls are not juice drinkers and didn’t know what to say, but were intrigued by the pomegranate juice he had. He took one out of his fridge and added it to our bag for free as a treat for them. We had such a fun time here and love how even at a wine shop, they still adore children and try to make their time in the shop special and fun, too.
A little further away on the Bay of Kotor was Tivat. It was too far to walk, being about a 20-minute drive away. It was definitely worth the trip to see and explore this area, which we did twice. It was a newer city, geared towards a luxury yachting community. There were so many gorgeous and expensive yachts moored in the Bay and all kinds of high-end designer shops near the water. There was also a gorgeous boardwalk with some amazing cafes and restaurants along the water, a huge playground just a block off the water our kids adored, and some cute stores to browse for us more common folk. The view out into the Bay was stunning, more than even in Kotor. It was much wider and separated from Kotor by a mountain range. As such, you have more hours of daylight and a more impressive sunset. This is definitely an area we would consider staying in the future, as well. It helps there’s a small airport right in Tivat. We met a family from the UK who flew directly to Tivat from London, so presumably, there are other European direct flight options, too.
The Bay is stunning in its beauty, and there’s so much to see and do around there. So much is accessible by foot or bike. It made for a great mix of spending time in Kotor and the nearby boardwalk, but also getting out and about to explore other nearby areas. And that doesn’t even mention all the amazing hiking in the area! Stay tuned to hear all about the beautiful hikes in our next blog post!