First Day in Kotor

I was awake just early enough to head down the hill and check if there was a bus going by at 6:35 am. That would be useful for when we need to leave Kotor next Saturday. The schedule in the apartment said buses went past here at 7:35, 8:35, 9:35, etc., but I thought there would be an earlier one. Sure enough, at 6:33 one pulled up and a few people hopped on.

By the time I got back, Sarah was almost up. The plan for this morning was to grab the 7:35 bus and go to the bigger supermarket in town. We had a meagre breakfast and then went down and got on the bus. We disembarked at the stop where we started yesterday and did a short recce walk around the Old Town. It's a pretty cool place with fortified-style walls and limited entrance gates—a bit like Dubrovnik but much smaller and with completely different styling. Dubrovnik is fancier-looking, whereas Kotor is more medieval. We intend to come back for a more extensive wander another morning, so it was just a quick look today.

We also found the entrance to walk up the hill (mountain) to the Kotor Fortress ruins. €15 for the privilege of probably dying in the heat, given it doesn't open until 8 am each day. We found a free backdoor entrance that takes you up the hill but doesn’t go all the way to the fortress. I might give that one a go using the early bus one morning. Let's see how my motivation for walking in extreme heat is later in the week. 🤔

We found the bigger town supermarket, which still wasn’t that big, but it had a reasonable range. We couldn’t find our favourite chicken spice mix—perhaps it was only available in Hungary and Croatia. ☹️ We got enough supplies for today and tomorrow. We’ve learned the hard way that shops will likely be shut on Sunday.

Back at base, I downloaded a time-lapse video I took from the balcony overnight. It’s the first one I’ve tried to capture, and this location looked like it would suit it. See what you think of below.

Before lunch, we went down to the beach for a swim. The water was really warm—cooler than being outside in the heat, but warm enough to float around for ages. We did so for about 30 minutes and then went up for lunch: egg sandwiches using fresh-baked bread from the mini store. Yum. 👍

A quiet afternoon reading and relaxing. It's nice being out of the Schengen zone and not having limited days tick away. We've used up 23 days already so have 67 remaining. 

There’s a cruise ship in the bay today. From seeing various accommodation photos, we assume they visit here often. They can’t dock, so passengers must come in via tenders. We were too early to see the crowds in town—probably a good thing.

Spaghetti Bolognese was the go-to for dinner and it was very nice, accompanied by a slice of bread and half a can of beer each. This apartment has by far the best-equipped kitchen we’ve had so far. It has pretty much everything you need—including multiple tea towels, which were often missing in other places we’ve visited.