Kotor, Montenegro: a little city on the coast of the Mediterranean that’s incredibly accessible to ambitious travelers. Montenegro never seems to be anyone’s first choice destination, but I’ve never met a soul who regretted visiting. This tiny country may only have 5,333 square miles in area but has some of the best views of any country I’ve ever visited. The drive along the Bay of Kotor allows you to experience both mountains and water all at once.
Though Kotor may not have as much to do as a seaside city in Croatia or Italy, it is still plenty worth your time. Here are the top 5 things to do on your trip to Kotor!
What else is out there if you’re ready to adventure a bit further outside of Kotor itself? Local tour companies also offer the opportunity to kayak, snorkel, and cave! You can book a tour that takes you out to the Adriatic coast.
Montenegro may be small, but its cities like Kotor offer a wide variety of activities to do. Kotor is quiet, hospitable, quaint, and charming. Don’t waste any more time – put Kotor on your vacation bucket list today!
This is a guest post.
They’ll eat me. They’ll eat me not.
A few serious discussions with friends from Sarajevo effectively crossed out Albania from my summer trip. Why would I go to a place where local people told PG-10 rated stories about how unsafe the country was, how dangerous people were after many years closing their country to the outside world during Communism, how our school bus tour to Greece had to change route heading to Macedonia instead of crossing Albania. Thinking that Muslim countries sympathize with one another, I told my friend I would pretend that I spoke Bosnian so they’d be friendly to me. “No. Then you sound like a Serbian, and they will hate you even more.” My friend laughed and joked that they might ‘eat’ me. (For those who don’t keep up with events in this region, Serbia and Kosovo had been fighting for years for the independence of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians made up the majority of the population.)
I finished my job in Bosnia and planned to cruise around the Balkan coast. Montenegro somehow seemed to fit the description for a cheap, relaxing and exotic destination to hang out for the rest of the summer before leaving Europe.
Cheap, yes. I could go on for days replicating the same cuisine style in Sarajevo, wine and dine on Turkish coffee (well not exactly wine), burek, cevapi, and soup for a few euros. Relaxing, of course. I’ve never spent my entire vacation at the beaches before. Exotic yes. Any place not well-known on tourist radar is exotic to me and pretty much everywhere in Eastern Europe.
Before heading to Sarajevo where I would spend the next year working, I made a brief stop in Zagreb to visit a few friends I met in Poland the year before. Unlike most European capitals, Zagreb is very dull. I bet few tourists intentionally travel here unless they are drunk out of their minds the night before and got on the wrong train. Croatia’s tourism jewels aka tourist traps lie along the Dalmatian coast, or as the Bosnians say the seaside. Let not think that this a blatant attempt from the Bosnians to usurp their neighbors’ territory. It is an old habit to refer to something which used to be theirs when Bosnia and Croatia were part of the same country, the Yugoslavia.
I teamed up with a Slovenian couple and an English guy whom I met at Velania guest-house for a trip to Peja. I didn’t know at the time how important Peja was, but I learned to trust people who traveled with a guidebook. Without much planning on where to go other than Pristinia, I feel relieved to find someone who would lead me during my remaining days in Kosovo. We arrived in Peja early in the morning, had a burek breakfast and a round of espresso before setting out to explore the city. Peja is a small town; we didn’t break a sweat finding our way. All we needed to do was following the main street from the bus station toward the mountain which dominated the city landscape, passing small shops, car parks and street cigarette vendors until we arrived at the entrance to Peja’s bazaar.
I left Velania guest-house, bought two bananas and an apple at a neighborhood store and walked down to the city center through small area pathways. At the main intersection, not knowing which direction to proceed and not bother to look at the map, I grabbed a man and asked for Bill Clinton and Mother Teresa. “Bill Clinton is there, and Mother Teresa is this way.” He pointed to two different directions. “Is it far?” “Bill Clinton is further down that direction. Mother Teresa is right here. Where do you want to go?” “I want Mother Teresa.” “Come with me.” He said and directed me to cross the street.
I woke at 3.30, not able to sleep because of the light from the window. I sat up from the seat, lowered the window and looked outside to uninteresting countryside landscape. I woke up the Macedonian, my bunk-mate, an hour later to move his legs aside so I could get out and find a train conductor who was nowhere in sight. One thing about train conductors is they are everywhere when you don’t need them, interrupt you in your meditative state of being to check your train ticket and wake you up from your beauty sleep at night to do another ticket controlling. The Macedonian rose from his
I woke up at 10, had a quick wash and quietly walked downstairs. The friend was sleeping on the couch next to table-fill of beer bottles and cigarette butts. I circled the flat for a brief five minutes and came near him whispering ‘hello, hello.’ He didn’t hear and sat down on the chair on the other side of the table, waiting for him to wake up. I took out my guidebook and tried to read, if not it would look awkward when he opened his eyes and saw a stranger staring at his face praying for him to wake up. It wasn’t my fixation that rattled him up.
Belgrade was still deep in its sleep. Except for a handful convenient shops opened for the early birds and night workers, everything was kept shut behind closed doors. I spotted a few figures crossing empty streets hurrying off from out of nowhere to perhaps somewhere. It was a new feeling to arrive in strange city in the dark, in a stranger’s car and run off to another stranger’s home. “So Cindy, do you have a plan?” I hesitated unable to answer the question, not exactly because I had no plan.
The article was submitted by LISA.
Bill wrote Fools Rush In in 2005. It’s an intense memoir of the sequence of events that led him to board an aid bus to Sarajevo, evade sniper’s bullets, and as fate would have it, help U2 broadcast Sarajevo’s struggle for survival during their Zoo TV tours. You could even say this young guy from California had a hand in stopping the war.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
