We woke up early to get up on the upper deck to watch the approach into Kotor. The route weaved through the Bay of Kotor, past the Church of Our Lady of Ε krpjela and Saint George Catholic Monastery, built on their own tiny islands. We also saw secret submarine tunnels built by the Yugoslav Army to hide submarines and boats from satellites and spy planes.
Since there was already a cruise ship at the dock, we had to anchor out in the bay and tender in. Something happened with the shore tender ships, so they ended up using the ship’s life boats to tender us to shore.
We had another day of exploring the old city on our own – it was a bit more of a challenge because our cell service didn’t work in Montenegro, so no maps on our phones! We walked along the city walls and past the churches of St. Nicholas, St. Luke, and St. Mary. Kotor is known as the City of Cats and there is a cat park near St. Mary’s where food and shelter is maintained for the city cats. They are captured, spayed/neutered and given vaccinations. This is also about where Betsy should have been looking down instead of up and missed a step and banged up her knees.
St. Tryphon’s Cathedral is a Romanesque Catholic church built in 1166. The gold inlayed frescoes were beautiful.
We stopped by Old Winery Wine Bar for lunch and a glass of wine/beer, while Dani and Jackson grabbed some lunch at Rendezvous restaurant.
We found the back entrance to the Ladder of Kotor – a 1.3 mile path of mostly steps that leads up 715 ft to Kotor Fortress. We only went as far as the first gate (about 125 steps), got some pictures, and returned back to go down to the beach. We walked back to the pier to grab the tender boat – which whatever the issue was had been resolved – and Jackson piloted us back to the ship!
