Kotor; Sunday, 07 May, 2023

I had an early start, in part due to the curtains in the room not being particularly heavy and letting quite a bit of light in, but also because I needed to be up early for my first attraction of the day.

After a very pleasant breakfast taken in the hotels restaurant out on the square I headed out of the city walls and down to the waterfront were I was able to book onto the 9am speedboat tour of The Bay of Kotor. The three hour tours run several times a day, but I thought it was unlikely that this one would be too busy, and also meant I wouldn’t be out on the water potentially without shade at the warmest part of the day. In the end the shade issue didn’t matter as the boats all had sun shades, but getting there early was an excellent idea as our tour only had 11 people on, where as the boats normally carry 24 – and all the other boats we saw for the rest of the morning were much more heavily loaded.

The tour starts by heading down the inner part of the Bay of Kotor to the town of Perast and the two islands just off it’s shore. The first, and at one point only, island is that of St George and houses a cemetery and a church that is only open for one day each year, and today wasn’t that day. Next door is the island of Our Lady of The Rocks – a man made island, created by the locals dropping rocks into the sea at this point until they created an actual island on which they could build a church of the same name. We were able to hop off the boat here to explore the island and the church, taking in the views back up the inner part of the bay, along with the narrow channel that links it through to the outer part of the bay and over to the pretty town of Perast itself.

From the island we hopped back onto the boat and continues through the channel and out into the outer part of the bay where the next stop was right over on the far coast, in fact under the coast as we sailed into one of the submarine bunkers that were cut into the rock of the peninsular by the Yugoslav navy to protect the from spying eyes. After sailing out of the bunker we continued on our way slowing down to take in the fortress on Mamula Island that is slowly being turned into a hotel and then on out into the Adriatic sea to our main stop of the day, just along the coast, in the blue cave.

This large sea cave has two entrances, only one of which our boat was able to fit through, but it allowed us access into the cave itself where the reflection of the sun between the two entrances and off of the stone and shallow floor of the cave create an eery bright blue glow to the water. We spent quite a bit of time in the cave and the area immediately outside, with some people on the tour taking the opportunity to have a quick swim – though they all agreed it really was too early in the year for the water to be warm enough to enjoy.

From the cave it was time to head back to Kotor and our captain opened up the taps on the speedboat getting us the 22 or so miles back to Kotor in under 45 minutes. From the harbour it was then a short walk back into the old town and a late lunch.

It took a bit of time to find a restaurant that had a seat for lunch as there were already quite a few tour groups wandering round and the restaurants and bars were very busy from all the day trippers. It soon became obvious that it was about to get a lot busier as a large MSC cruise ship announced its arrival in the Bay with several long blasts of it’s horn as it’s docked at the cruise terminal and disgorged another 2,500 day trippers, within 20 minutes the centre of Kotor was absolutely heaving so I headed back to the hotel for a little while to relax and avoid the worst of the crowds – though from my room which overlooked the city walls I could watch group after group being led round.

Once it had quietened down a bit I headed back out of the hotel and went for a wander through the now quieter streets, stopping off at the Orthodox church of St Nicholas and the neighbouring St Luka church before stopping at an adjacent café for a pre-dinner drink.

I had a bit more of a wander around the old town until it started to get dark and then I headed over to a very nice seafood restaurant that I’d seen by the Cathedral for dinner before returning to my hotel.