Kotor is a small city in a small country. The population of the entire country is only about 625,000; the population of Kotor only amounts to about 13,000 people. Nonetheless Kotor has one of the best preserved medieval old towns in the Adriatic. It is also a UNICEF World Heritage Sight, probably for that reason. The approach to Kotor involves navigating some spectacular fjords with views of majestic landscapes that have to be seen to be believed.

After taking a tender ship in, we took a walking tour of the old city. We started the tour by entering through a city gate—all the medieval cities had high thick walls and gates to keep attackers like pirates away. The attackers this time were tourists.

When we passed through the gate into the heart of the city we quickly came across the Cathedral of St Tryphon which was originally built in 1166. That’s worth thinking about when we Americans have developed the habit calling anything that’s been around for 100 years “old”.

Anyway we went into the church with our tour guide and gave it a look. I would say the best description of the inside would be “elegant”.

Which is more than I can say about the hordes of tourists that invaded the city. We started our tour around 9:30 or so and by 10:30 a full scale invasion seemed to be underway.

We knocked around the city for a bit more and saw the Serbian Orthodox Church of St Nicholas. The we went out for quite a nice lunch in a local place in town.


All in all, Kotor was a really nice place to visit. But it is easy to see why the townspeople have a love-hate relationship with the cruise ships that bring in so many visitors—and the headaches that come with them.
JFB