Kotor, Monentenegro
Kotor is located really far off of the Adriatic sea, through three straights at the southern end of the Gulf of Kotor. Montenegro is one of those countries that didn’t exist independently the last time I had a geography class, so I can only say it’s one of the countries across the water to the right of Italy. This is the largest city we’ve been to since we left Athens, but it’s still just a very small coastal town.
As we sailed into the Gulf, we passed fortified gun emplacements on the shore and islands. These were very hard to make out, though, as it was really hazy this morning and visibility was poor at a distance. It kept making the auto focus on the camera do weird things. I got out on deck just as the pilots arrived to help guide us in. As we went through the straights we passed two concrete tunnels that opened onto the water, which we were told were the entrances to a cold war era underground submarine base. I had read that Kotor is sometimes called the most southern fjord in Europe, but I was a little disappointed as we entered wider portion of the gulf. It really didn’t strike me as very fjordish at all. But then as we sailed towards the other side I could see that there was another passage on the other side we were heading for. This one was much narrower but the hills were rising around us as we went through. As we got to the other side there were two islands right in front of us. We took a traditional good luck lap around the islands…one had another beautiful church on it and the other a monastery. We blew our horn as we went by and the church responded by ringing its bell. That was pretty cute but I felt bad for the guy who has to go ring the bell every time a boat blows its horn.
A few minutes later we arrived at Kotor. I was eating breakfast when we docked, but headed up to take pictures. The town is set around the base of a high, rocky ridge that ends near the water. It was really hazy, but it looked like there were some kind of walls up on the ridge, that curved up and down the hillside and reminded me of the Great Wall of China. It was really hard to get a good grasp of the scale, though, but I didn’t think this was much higher than Monemvassía. This city was similar to Monemvassía in that there was an older part, surrounded by a wall, and then the newer part surrounding it.
Getting on shore, we went into the very cool looking gate and into a square full of tables under umbrellas. The town is very old and was most recently built up by the Venetians, and shares a lot of architectural influences (I’m told). The streets were very narrow and the buildings very high. I wanted to get pictures of several things but I couldn’t get far enough back to frame them up well. JR (my fellow system administrator) and I kind of poked our way through the city until we wound up at what I think was the back door, where a draw bridge had once protected the city. We also discovered skinny little cats everywhere. We came back through and paid two Euros to start up the hill towards the Fortress. We had already been going uphill, as the streets going that direction had turned to stairs as soon as we left the main road we had followed to the back gate. From here it varied between dirt and rocks but at some point steps had been built against the stone walls. The walls seemed in pretty good shape down below as they had kept the trails in place for a long time but depending on where you were they also would have provided for defense, being lined with holes to shoot out of. The trail kept switching back and forth and came out on small level areas occasionally. These were always good spots to take pictures of the city below and our ship at the pier.
About halfway up we came to a really neat little church, but we continued on, and on and on. I think this hill turned out to be at least twice as high as the one at Monemvassía. We continued to stop here and there for pictures both of the stuff below us and the fortress and walls above us. I guess I didn’t mention that it was at least ninety and the humidity was out of hand. Our eyes were burning from the sweat and sun screen. At the very top is one last fortress and a pole with a Montenegrin flag. I should have taken more pictures from there, but it seemed like I had taken so many already, plus I was too hot and tired to really care.
One interesting thing is that about three quarters of the way to the top we began following the top of the ridge higher, rather than climbing up the side. I was surprised to realize that there was a deep valley on the other side of this thing as well and the top was really very narrow. This valley doesn’t show up in any of my pictures of the ridge from below, as it just blends in together with the next hill, but I did take many pictures of it as well from above.
On the way down we found a couple of turn offs to other parts of the fort we had missed on the way up. One was what I’m sure was the fort’s powder magazine. There was a high wall at least twice as thick as most of them blocking the opening except from the sides and the room itself was dug deeply into the hillside unlike any of the others. It was so much easier going down that it seemed like it hardly took any time at all and we reached the bottom at a different part of the town than where we started, so that made it a pretty complete tour.
We stopped for something to drink in the town after getting some pictures of the inside of another famous church here, before we headed back to get showers, lunch and back to work on the ship. As we got ready to sale from here in the early evening, I had to take more pictures of the hill, as you could see much more clearly how insane this fortress was. I was also overwhelmed with how high the mountains around us were. They had been hidden in the morning haze. The ridge we climbed was just a small spur but the ones a little beyond the shore were two or three times as high and they surrounded the gulf. JR noticed that the road between the villages around the gulf ran just above the water all the way around. There were only two or three places where there was a gentle enough path for roads to be built down to connect to it.
thank you for your posts, i really like to read them. Still photo’s are missing here.. Hope to see some later. You have fun and keep us updated!
Your photos are so good that I was ashamed to share mine. Just kidding…pics are on Facebook, Ivan, although I hope to get some here, too, for one-stop shopping.