We woke up early, and ate some leftover fruits from yesterday for our breakfast while packing up our stuff. Overnight we had found some troubles with our hotel room – the air conditioning had suddenly turned on in the middle of the night (maybe the power had turned off and on?), the WiFi kept dropping out, and the doorknob to the bathroom came right off and fell in pieces to the floor. Luckily we aren\u2019t staying another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We checked out of the hotel and then walked down to where we figured the ferry would be moored. We actually hadn\u2019t seen to ferry itself yet, so we walked around a bit until we found someone who knew what we were looking for, and they directed us towards the right boat. We arrived early at the ferry terminal, and soon were in a long line to go through immigration and board. The line continued behind us, extended right outside the building and into the hot sun – we were glad we got there early. The line and the immigration process were not organized, and several times people were cutting ahead for whatever reason. Eventually we got our documents checked and we were able to board, sitting near the window on the starboard side of the boat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We looked back and saw that there was still a long line of people waiting for immigration, so we had time to relax. The ferry left a little late (and completely full), but soon gained speed and started heading south along the coastline. Because we were making an international trip the ferry was closed up – just like our ferry between Hong Kong and Macau there was no access to the outside. Kuniko played picture shiritori and enjoyed the views now and then of the coastline to our left and the ocean to our right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After an hour or so we turned into the Bay of Kotor, and once we did they opened up the back doors of the ferry so that we could enjoy the fresh air and take photos. Later we went back to our seats – the guy who had been sitting next to us was gone, leaving only a half empty plastic bottle on his seat. This led to a weird situation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sat back in our original seats, and enjoyed the cruise through the bay. A lady came by and asked if the empty seat was occupied, and we said that there was a guy there before, but he left and there was only his bottle remaining. She shrugged and picked up his bottle and threw it in the nearby recycling bin, and then sat down in the now-empty seat. After a few minutes the ship captain announced that we\u2019d be docking soon, and that everyone should take their seats. So the original guy came back and was surprised to see this lady in his seat. He told the lady that it was his seat, and she said that she thought it was available, and then they both looked at us like we were somehow responsible for this situation. WTF?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The guy asked the lady where his bottle was, and she told him that she had dumped it, and then he asked where her original seat was because he needed to be seated for docking, and she motioned somewhere in the back – so off he went. It was so weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once we docked at Kotor, people stood up and started lining up to get off the boat. I grabbed our suitcase and we left the boat near the middle of the group – about half the people were in front of us and half behind. But the system outside was (also) completely disorganized. There was a little shade next to a building, and people were supposed to line up to go through immigration, but the line was chaotically weaving back and forth and nobody seemed to know which way to go. Somehow even though we got off the boat in the middle we were second to last in line. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some unlucky people were lined up directly in the sun and just burning. We managed to sidle up to the shade most of the time, but it took 90 minutes of standing around before we were able to get into the immigration building. At no time did the staff of the boat do anything to guide, direct, or assist their passengers. The ferry company, Adriatic Lines, was very poorly staffed and organized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally we got into the building, got our passports stamped, and we were free to enter the walled city of Kotor. By this time the city was packed with tourists, and it was still really hot. We entered the main city gates, and the architecture and layout was similar to Dubrovnik and Zadar, but slightly narrower streets. Above the city on the hillside a fortified wall zigzagged upwards, with people actually hiking up the steep hillside. I\u2019m sure the views were great but there was no way I was hiking up there in this kind of summer heat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not far inside the city gate we found our hotel, Hotel Vardar. It was a really nice hotel, and we dropped off our suitcase in our air conditioned room and then went out to take a look around. Everywhere in town they were selling items related to cats – shirts, magnets, etc. Soon we found out why – there were cats everywhere. More than Istanbul, and they were all friendly. We were always walking by cats in this town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were hungry so we found a restaurant and sat down for some food and drink. Our table was in the shade, a fan was hooked up to a mister above us and did a great job of cooling us down. We ordered a plate of local meat and cheese – the smoked prosciutto was awesome, and some of the sheep\u2019s cheese was stored in olive oil, also tasty. We ordered a bottle of local sparkling wine, and our cheerful server managed to get it open and set it in an ice bucket next to the table. We were in heaven – totally blissed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Afterwards we walked some more – bought a keychain, had some gelato (not that great), checked out a square that seemed to be cat central, where many kittens lay in the shade, and there was a small care station where volunteers (I guess) took care of cats and made sure they were healthy. Back outside our hotel front entrance the pizza place that had a huge line when we came in was surprisingly empty, so I made a slightly drunken decision to buy a big slice, and we took it up to our room to enjoy it – yum, pizza!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since it was siesta time I took a nap, Kuniko checked out YouTube, and we waited patiently for the heat to pass. Later that evening we went for a walk outside the city along the waterfront. We sat and enjoyed the view of the bay – it was very peaceful in the evenings with fewer boats and cruise ships. Some guys walked by and a swimmer pointed out that one of them had sat in something – his friend used water to clean the seat of his pants. The swimmer later asked me to take his picture as he treaded water in the bay. We also stopped at a small market nearby to get some water and pear juice. We took them back to our room, hydrated a little, and then went back out to get some dinner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing we had noticed was that from outside the city you could see a building that had a set of three big domes, almost like a mosque. But once we got into the city the streets were so narrow that we couldn\u2019t find the domed building. We tried several times – where was it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For dinner we ate in a big square outside a church, with the sun down it was nice to eat under the sky. We had tuna tartare, and Montenegran bruschetta with soft cheese, tomatoes and dried ham chips. We also had some wine – I had a ros\u00e9 that was good, Kuniko had a tart white wine. A place nearby was playing some background music and it was a very peaceful dinner. We watched tourists walking by, many stopping to take pictures of the church. At 8 pm the church bells rang, not 8 times but about 50 times, that was unusual. While the bells were ringing the restaurant turned off the background music until they were done – a nice touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After dinner we again searched for the domed building but came up empty. There were a lot of cute restaurants, some with people waiting in line. One place that was popular had tacos(!) on the menu – that didn\u2019t sound very traditional. The city was really beautiful at night – it sort of reminded me of Havana in a way, with dark corners and so much history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally we headed back to our hotel – it is great to be staying inside the city itself. After two travel days we get to have a whole day here in Kotor tomorrow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We woke up early, and ate some leftover fruits from yesterday for our breakfast while packing up our stuff. Overnight we had found some troubles with our hotel room – the air conditioning had suddenly turned on in the middle of the night (maybe the power had turned off and on?), the WiFi kept dropping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[86],"class_list":["post-3925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/img_7025.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-11j","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}