Kotor, Montenegro

The old town of Kotor sits at the bottom of a mountain, and its fortress walls stretch up the steep mountainside. The old town is much smaller than that of Dubrovnik but has lots of winding cobblestone streets and small squares to wander through. In comparison, it's not as "picture perfect" as there are still plenty of old buildings that have not been renovated.

As in Dubrovnik, the sun is mercilessly hot starting from around 9am to 6pm, and all the heat gets trapped inside the walls making it even worse. There's not too many people on the streets during this time. They either head to the nearby beach or sit in outdoor cafes drinking cold drinks to try to cool down. Both were still too hot for us so we ended up getting up super early to walk around and hike up the fortress walls while it's still cool.

Here's just a part of the hike:

Speaking of being laid back, the previous evening we had asked the woman at the fortress entrance whether we could pay the 2 Euro entrance fee up front since she's not there until 8am. She basically told us not to worry about it and to just go (there's not gate at the entrance to lock it up)... and then she offered to just let us go in at that point. She also told us that there's no need to hike all the way to the top (1 hour of uphill climb), and that you can get a beautiful panoramic view from the church which is only a 20 minute hike. We took her advice. I'm sure the view from the top is more spectacular but I'm not sure the difference is worth the extra effort.

We then headed back to the apartment to nap. We had found this English movie channel (it went in and out and switches channels every so often) so we got sucked into watching a couple. Did you know that Montenegro is mentioned in The Great Gatsby? How appropriate. You take what you can get when it comes to English TV. In Budapest the only thing in English was BBC so we were very up to date on world news that week. At another place it was really bad TV shows that I've never heard of, and here, only movies.... not that we watch that much TV but I do miss having the option (and my Food Network and The Amazing Race).

We went out in the evening to walk around again. There's not much more to do so 2 nights was the perfect amount of time to spend in Kotor. With all this heat we're really looking forward to a few days of R&R by the beach in Budva.