Sailing in the Med #6 - Kotor
It’s my last sailing week of the season, and what a cracker it has been! After chartering a yacht with one of our trusted yacht partners from Dubrovnik, it’s been amazing to cruise around the islands here, though it has to be said that one of my favourite sailing destinations was Kotor, in neighbouring Montenegro (but still only 20-30 nautical miles away).
Kotor’s walled old town is steeped in great history, and its narrow, cobbled, car-free narrow streets and squares are full of restaurants, café’s, bars and tavernas – the whole village positively throbs in the mid-afternoon sun, when everyone has found a chair in the shade and is enjoying the local beer or wine.
There is a very popular walk from the old town to the fortress on the top of the hill: whilst it involves 1,350 steps, the views from the top are truly incredible, and well worth the sweat and toil if you’ve got the heart and the legs for it. There’s a guy at the top who sells water and bottles of coke, but lord only knows how he gets them up there: he must be either some kind of weightlifter or he must make the journey several times a day!
But it’s not the town or the fortress that will impress you the most: the passage to Kotor is the part which is truly spectacular. Set slightly inland from the main Mediterranean Sea, it feels as though you’re navigating along a fjord as you wind your way between the mountains, around islands with monasteries or farms on, and from rugged landscapes to warm civilisation as you find a berth for the night. Simply outstanding.
At the moment, we don’t charter from Kotor, but it is possible to get there from Dubrovnik.
