Kotor, Montenegro
Here’s another one for your “CAN’T MISS” list.
You will find photos of our sailing into Kotor through the southern-most fjord in Europe but they can't do it justice. You will have to visit and you should come in by sea. Just sayin. We had been prepped for this most excellent destination, the cruise director came on the PA system and talked us through some of it by sharing stories and legends, and still we were surprised and absolutely dazzled. Thankfully, the low hanging clouds never really produced; instead, they added their contrasts to the magical feel.
We will include a small map that may give you some
orientation to the fjords and to the mountains that tower over the
harbors. Lone monasteries can be seen a
great distance up the mountains from civilization. Watch James Bond’s Casino
Royale to see it as a movie set (they always found unique places).
Kotor is another ancient city with another old, old
city inside that is completely surrounded by walls. What’s unique about Kotor (having just
visited our first—wow—walled in old city in Dubrovnik yesterday, two hours away
by car) is that Kotor lies at the base of a mammoth mountain rising to 5738 ft,
its old city’s walls range from 7 ft to 50 (!) feet in thickness, and reach a
maximum height of about 65 ft. Inside,
some of the structures date to the 1100s.
To top it off, the entire city is a UNESCO Heritage Site.
But once we were moored and tours began to depart, our
tour for today didn’t start in Kotor.
Instead, about 13 of us loaded onto a boat and were ferried about 20
minutes away to a sea village called Prcanj (per CHANG) where we hiked up a
huge staircase to the Catholic Church of the Nativity Virgin where we were
greeted outside the door with a table of goodies as a welcome. On the table were paper cups with the locally
made plum brandy called rakija (rah KEE ya), cups of nectarine juice (which
some chose to pour their brandy into), and homemade donut holes that were to be
dipped into a bowl of honey. After
basking in that local hospitality, we wandered into the church and looked
around, then were treated to a 45-minute concert by a quartet of flutists, each
of whom was a music teacher. These four
women were splendid and performed pieces from their culture along with pieces
we would recognize such as “New York, New York” and “Maple Leaf Rag”—neither of
which I had ever heard on a flute! Jerry
said later that there was about a 5 second reverb in the church (rather large
dome way up over them), but that didn’t stop us from enjoying every
moment. The four women seemed accustomed
to the reverb and played their hearts out.
Then we loaded back onto the boat for a 4-minute commute to a seaside restaurant that looked Italian with tables set almost on the water covered with vines for sun protection in the summer. Again there was local brandy (grape this time), local white wine and red wine (although they don’t have a word for red wine so they call it black wine), fresh bread, salad, fish soup, then platters upon platters laden with fresh fish, fresh prawns, calamari, and spaghetti with shrimp sauce. What. A. Feast!
Back into the boat again, we motored back to Kotor so that our guide could take us into and through the Old City, showing us the main points with stories before turning us loose to wander as long as we wished through the shops and restaurants. Our ship was docked about a block from there so we were free to go at our own pace, returning when we wished.
Inside, the city has lots of named squares with
functional names like Milk Square, Bread Square, Salad Square, and Church
Square. You can guess what which housed
the bakery, the market, and such. In
fact, Church Sq. has TWO churches—one that is Greek Orthodox (built in 1909)
and the other is Catholic (built in 1195).
At one point in earlier history, the Catholic church had two altars—one
for themselves and one for the Greek Orthodox. Interesting.
This school has been here since the 13th century
Our guide was an energetic brunette whose name was
Bruna (means brunette) “My parents weren’t really creative,” she said. As she shared the many changes in her
country’s vast history of occupation, she added, “I’ve lived in the same house
for the past twenty years, but in 4 different countries!” I can’t imagine…
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