MONTENEGRO || Kotor - travel vlog (plus Perast, Durmitor, Stari Bar) 15 Degrees North

15° North are travelling again! This time we are in the Balkans in stunning Montenegro. There we visit: Kotor, the Bay of Kotor, Perast,Our Lady Of The Rocks, Horizont, Sveti Stefan, Stari Bar, Durmitor National Park.
Jérémy and Ben here again! We love to travel and to satisfy our wanderlust, we are on a worldwide odyssey exploring the best places for a break around the world. We love to escape Britain to experience the best culture, cuisine and attractions that the globe has to offer. If you’re a tourist like us and just need a good itinerary for what to do and how to do it when you’re in Montenegro, we will show you the best things to put on your itinerary.
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Montenegro is a tiny country that sits in the south-western corner of the former Yugoslavia. Independent since 2006, it has quickly developed a thriving tourism industry with people flocking from around the world to see what used to be one of Europe’s most remarkable hidden gems. The Bay of Kotor.
Surrounded by the steep slopes of the Dinaric Alps, the bay is actually a ria, with water from the Adriatic Sea entering through a channel only 340 metres wide at its narrowest stretch. A ria is a flooded unglaciated river valley.
The town of Kotor, which sits at the southern end of the bay, is a medieval walled city, with many of its buildings dating from the Venetian Empire. Its fortifications have made it a UNESCO World Heritage Site, giving it the feel of nearby Dubrovnik, which is just a stone’s throw up the coast. But the real star of the show is the landscape, with people often describing it is a Europe’s southernmost fjord. But we know better, because it’s obviously not a fjord. It’s a ria.
The population of Kotor is actually tiny. Less that 15,000 people live there, but every day several cruise ships dock in the bay and the town fills up with people, with about a quarter of a million people visiting annually. Croatia’s tourism boom of the last two decades has definitely brought Montenegro along with it. And there’s a lot of similarities between the two. But if you ask us, we would choose Kotor over Dubrovnik any day.
It might be a popular destination, but it’s absolutely not at saturation-point, unlike its Croatian neighbours. However its popularity is reflected in its prices. The cost of living in Montenegro is higher than many of its Balkan neighbours, but that just means you’ll have to shop a little bit smarter when you’re there.
Kotor isn’t the only thing to do on the Bay. Make sure to head to Perast, a stunning little town right at the centre of its eastern shore, from which you can get a boat out to the two islands, with one a monastery and the other a church. The latter is called Our Lady of the Rocks, which is actually an artificial island, built after a local seaman apparently discovered an icon of the Virgin Mary on a rock there, submerged by the sea. Ever since, a tradition emerged that locals would travel to the spot and drop rocks onto it. Over the years, the pile of rocks grew bigger and bigger until an island emerged from the sea. An island large enough to build a church on. And today, people still throw rocks into the sea here, keeping the tradition alive.
Of course, the Bay of Kotor is not the only thing worth seeing in Montenegro. Head out to the coast and you’ll see lots of Venetian towns that look just like the ones people adore in Croatia. We took a beach day at Sveti Stefan, but there are many others you can see in both directions from Kotor. But make no mistake, the tourists are here in force in the summer months.
Heading inland and you begin to feel a cultural change. Here there is much more of an influence from its time as part of the Ottoman Empire, reflected in several border towns’ mosques, souks and medinas. But we’ll be talking much more about that side of the Balkans in our Albania video!
The clue toward the terrain of Montenegro is in its name. Literally translated as the Black Mountain, Montenegro is blessed with some of the most stunning views across the Dinaric Alps. So which one of those is the eponymous Black Mountain? It’s actually right next door to Kotor, but we never managed to get up there. But we did get to the Black Lake, which was the next best thing. And it was absolutely gorgeous.
Until recently, if you’d asked us where was the best place to visit in the Balkans, we would have said “If you like the coast, Croatia and if you like the mountains, Bosnia.” But Montenegro has both in equal measure. We’re not saying that Montenegro is better than the others but... No no, that’s exactly what we’re saying. Montenegro is the Jewel of the Balkans.