Stops: Tiny Home Kotor Kecil, Church of Our Lady of Remedy, Tvrđava St. Ivan (St. John’s Fortress) (Days 198-199)

When your online friends who have been to Montenegro say things like, “I assume you are going to Kotor.” and “You simply must go to Kotor. I can’t stress this enough.” the bar is pretty high. My expectations didn’t even approach the reality. I have seen, and even stayed in, some very scenic “Old Towns” on this trip filled with narrow cobblestone streets, thousand year old stone churches, and jumbles of medieval stone houses. But, Kotor…..

I found an AirBnB room at a very reasonable rate right in the heart of the Old Town. And, the host speaks Indonesian! All of the rooms have Indonesian names like “Kotor Indah,” “Kotor Benteng” and mine “Kotor Kecil.” Kotor means dirty in Indonesian, so they just decided to lean into it with “Dirty Beautiful,” “Dirty Fortress,” and mine “Dirty Tiny.” It was perfect.

My seven square meter room. With washing machine! Yeah, clean clothes.

One of the two roof terraces attached.

And, it came with a friend. Kotor is full of cats. Everywhere. They do not seem to belong to anyone, but belong to everybody. Many of them are very friendly. And, they all look very well–fed. Even the most feral of them look pretty healthy. The whole town looks after them.

Even the rare dog is friendly with the cats.

Have to cross a working drawbridge on my way to and from the supermarket outside the walls. How cool is that?

The next day, I wandered around town a bit. Mid-day it is absolutely packed with cruise ship visitors, so early in the morning is best and then back to the terrace to read during the middle of the day. The mountains are so steep that the sun starts setting around 5, so just before that to get the best light, I headed up to the Church of Our Lady of Remedy.

So steep. looking back down at the church and town below. Less than half way up.

I didn’t plan to walk the whole fortress, but along the way I discovered the 15 Euro entrance fee to the ramparts, so time to make the most of it and continue up all 1,300 steps (around 300 meters elevation change) to the small and main fortresses.

Small fortress is more intact than the main at the top.

The light!

The Fortress of St. John gives amazing panoramic views of the town and the bay.

And, all the way back down again. The moon rising over the Fort. At first I thought it was a spotlight.