KOTOR, MONTENEGRO – Top Things To Do & Hidden Gems!

KOTOR, MONTENEGRO – Top Things To Do & Hidden Gems!

[Music] [Music] all righty fellow Travelers welcome back to Adventures of a traveling Dawn in our continued series here in the Balkans we have made it to coutur Montenegro and today we’re going to be exploring the Oldtown The Fortress up on the hill behind me and of course parts of the bay around here as well this is my third time in this town I love this Old Town there’s so much history to it it is a UNESCO world heritage site so come on and let’s explore this great town of Couture Montenegro [Music] [Music] so the basis of a town for cure goes back to Roman times however the Cure that we really kind of see here begins at the end of The 14th Century where it did become uh independent for a time and then when ottoman rule kind of started to close in they uh petitioned the Republic of Venice to join them as kind of like a shall we say proxy state to an extent and cotor and cotor bay was specifically under the protection of the venetians until I think like the late 18th century so it is kind of kind of cool like the main gate that you pass through uh was I believe built in 1555 uh and it just opens up into this initial square of arms and just the town from there just kind of continues on it’s I love it because you just kind of get lost into the Alleyways it’s not that big so you don’t get too lost as long as you know where your kind of like key points are um but it’s still just it’s a beautiful fantastic Old City I love see I love stuff like this this history so particularly yeah being inside something about being inside a stone wall it’s just kind of cool so but anyway let’s go ahead and get something to eat and then we’ll continue on [Music] [Music] okay so if you guys watch my last video when I arrived at coutour you know that specifically within the walls food is great the restaurants are great it does get expensive so if you’re looking to budget while you’re here in cotour you just come across the river over the walls outside of the Oldtown and you will find places like this fall called the terraa resturant bar and this is north of the small River just right outside the the north gate so there’s three gates the main gate is the sea gate that we went in through earlier the second one is of course the River Gate or the North Gate you just come out here beautiful area by the way right along the river so you can kind of have this sort of like nice ambulance and you can get for breakfast this right here this plate is about €64 holy crap yeah Pudo three fried eggs a little bit of kind of like a sour cream it’s not fully kimok it is I more of a sour cream young cheese for you there just a small little salad and then of course a plate of bread to go with that and then of course you have your coffee which cost €2 so this is all probably with tax about maybe 10 for all of this so we’re going to dig in real quick so try the eggs for just like look at like the dark Yol that’s what I love about you know it’s fresh eggs it’s like these this yolk is just so dark it’s so very good very good eggs try a little bit of the cheese y cheese here for you oh that’s delicious that is absolutely fantastic cheese and then a little Pudo you know eggs cheese a little bit of cheese just kind of more of a definitely a European style breakfast perfect perfect we’ll even try this sort of like sour cream I do not believe that this is kimok uh but it could be wrong it’s not as clotted as the kach I had last night but let’s give it a try yep I think it’s more over sour cream it’s not purely Kim but this is all absolutely delicious and like I said it’s only about 10 years for the whole thing and you get to sit by the river and you’re not too far you know it’s about 5 minutes right outside the uh North Gate definitely if you’re looking for a breakfast place or even a lunch Place tadaka Resto bar it’s place to [Music] come so before we head back into town and then make our way up to the Fort I did want to point out there’s a few different things particular on the North side but I think even on the South Side there are paths into the mountains and even there’s extra there’s a couple different ways to get up to the Fort this one on the north side of the river is another one that kind of goes around the back end and then comes across into the Fortress so there’s different uh there are different paths this one is kind of cool I’ve done this before I’m going to show you guys uh what’s down here in just a second but I did want to point out that there are multiple paths up to up up to the Fortress now I’m going to show you the the main one we’re going to take is the one directly from the town but there are multiple ways up all right so that little path just kind of leads towards kind of like the head here of the the valley that kind of runs through there you can’t as far as I’m aware really get through there right now it’s not too bad it’s actually at a low level of water I’ve been here in uh in the past where it was just rushing you couldn’t even be where I’m here now um was after kind of like a relatively big rainstorm so you do have to time it differently depending on the time of the season the year even like whether there was a big rain or not but it is kind of a nice cool spot cuz you like not many people come down here and you can just kind of like listen to the water and sort of like Zen yourself out so but just kind of like a cool little hidden part here in cotor just outside the the north wall [Music] [Music] so a sort of unofficial attraction of cotor at the at least that I’m aware of is of course the cats of cure there’s actually a shop called cats of cure but these cats are everywhere in cure particularly in like this specific Square near the north gate you get these cats all all over the place um and they’re very very wellfed by the locals here and they’re like some of the sweetest kind of like Community cats I really wouldn’t even call them stray cats uh because they are part of the community but they’re not owned by one specific person they just sort of are part of Coture and they’re generally really friendly you know you go to certain places in Europe you see cats all the time in European cities but a lot of times they’re kind of skittish uh but these ones here in codor they’re [Music] [Music] friendly it’s just something about the ringing of church bells that was the Noonday Bell by the way so it’s midday but that’s just I love that kind of sound absolutely fantastic so but anyway right down there is of course the main gate to come into the uh the trail that leads up to the Fortress now during the season I do believe they have a someone there to give you a ticket uh I don’t remember how much it is I think the only time I’ve ever been charged it was like maybe like six5 or something like that but this was back in 2018 they might have up the price I’m not entirely short however during the off season and a lot of times like this there is nobody there so you can just walk right up so but anyway time to start the climb and enjoy these [Music] views now I know everything that you’ve seen so far and you will see beautiful architecture this is the gem of AR Ural uh designs here in Montenegro you see these stairs look at these stairs they go up to a platform where it’s all fenced off on this side on this side but if you look along the edge there there’s no railing there so you go up hop the fence drink your drink apparently leaving your trash like a bunch of N capois and then jump off the cliff it seems reversed I don’t know what how how this happened but it is an architectual wonder of the world well done cotour so weird [Music] [Music] [Music] so the first mjor stop on your way up to cotor Fortress is going to be the little church behind me and this is the Church of Our Lady of Remedy and it’s about a third of the way up I’d say probably close to about maybe 500 steps all the way up to get up to here so you think it’s probably close to about almost 1,500 to get all the way up to the Fortress but it’s the first place where you can get your great views uh first above Oldtown cotor which is just kind of cool I mean this if if you see shots of cure like good photos usually it’s from this spot and getting kind of all of the bay and the mountains in the background just so cool like it’s just absolutely beautiful but yeah this is a church that was built I think in 158 18 um under the dicese of Cur and I believe there’s actually they have found an excavations underneath it was built on top of a 6th Century earlier Byzantine Basilica uh cuz this area used to be run initially it was run by the Romans I believe it was called acuum was the name of the town before before cotor and then I guess it fell into disrepair because in the 6th Century uh Emperor Justinian uh basically kind of revamped this whole area uh the for Fortress up top that we’ll get to eventually I don’t believe that is the original Fortress The Fortress that is there now was built on top of that but there was a fortress up there during Justinian’s time so the history dates back all the way to the time of the Romans uh but specifically the byzantines where they really started to kind of like like Coture was really to an extent a very important place along the Adriatic it’s one of the most important part uh ports during the Byzantine era uh definitely during uh its own independent era uh it was sacked by the sarasin during 800s there was actually I believe a plaque that did tell me about how the Lower Town of cure that you see down there was conquered by the sarin but there was an upper town in the fort old fortress uh that survived and kind of like that that was where everybody uh fled to because you know you go up here like this is this is very hard to get a conquering Army up cuz you can easily defend this at multiple points but uh yeah this is your first spot is is the church here it’s about a third of the way up to the [Music] [Music] Fortress okay so as you can see we have made it to the base of the Fortress you still have a few hundred more steps to get up to the top however we have now officially made it to the Fortress of cure first off the views just get better the higher you get absolutely stunning but what’s kind of cool is because it’s a mixture of History so some of like the base that you see here and a lot of the initial groundwork that you see coming up a lot of that was done early on from like the Byzantine Empire all the way through you know the 12th century maybe even in the 14th century however at the end of the 15th centur when it was under the Republic of Venice that’s when a lot of these ramp Parts uh placements for cannons and stuff like that those were all added in later by the venetians and particularly during the Venetian time which they ruled over Couture for probably about 3 and a half centuries maybe a little bit more that’s when Couture really kind of blossomed into a major port city for trading as well as military I mean even during as late as the ostroh Hungarian Empire during World War I uh this was one of their major ports in the Adriatic during the war so again a lot of great history in cure from you know postclassical Antiquity times to really almost modern so but anyway look in [Music] here why are Castle steps so bloody steep I mean people several centuries ago were not as tall as we are now now given I’m not the tallest human but 5’8 I would have been one of the taller is people back in the day they have stairs like that the hell were these people thinking [Music] [Music] another cool thing about this Fortress and really castles in general is the ones that are still kept well together have all these little nooks and crannies uh and Rooms To Go into kind of like this right here I mean oo spooky spooky room see if I can’t get some light my flashlight for my phone does not give off a lot of light but oh that’s cool yeah this did didly squat in here but anyway yeah that’s what I love about exploring castles and ruins particularly those that have survived the test of time cuz you have all these little r rooms that you can kind of check out which are really [Music] [Music] cool so the next part of the Fortress that we’re at here is called the sanzo placement and this was considered probably the most important part of the Fortress so this was almost kind of like not the final defense obviously the Citadel at the top is where they would make any last stands if anybody got that far however I believe this is where you had most of the placements for the guns at one point in time and it does give a commanding view of the entire Bay as you can see there so and from here it’s just almost like a narrow shot that’s very easily defensible um from this point on it’s actually rather relatively big Courtyard so you could have plenty of soldiers here to defend as you could say this sort of like last Bastion before you have to actually start defending the Citadel itself [Music] [Music] [Music] and as you can see we’ve made it to the top of cotor Fortress what a hike but uh it’s a good one it’s a good one I’d say it takes if you were to it straight you could probably come up in about 45 minutes and then another you know 40ish minutes to go down so you can do this hike if you just do it as a hike in about an hour 15 but obviously you want to spend time and kind of read the plaqu on the history obviously get some great pictures uh and videos along the way but it is definitely definitely worth it even when you have to buy a ticket it’s phenomenal like the whole climb up is great and then of course when you get to the top you have just this view of the mountains in the background is just phenomenal little point for you guys by the way uh Montenegro uh as the country is known is actually the Spanish name for the country and I don’t know why they use the Spanish name or we in the world just generally use the Spanish version of it uh the the locals call it sagora uh when you come in you’ll see sign Montenegro and then you’ll see underneath it sagora sagora basically means Black Mountain just like Montenegro means black or dark mountain and that is because a lot of the mountains here in monegro are all dark whether it’s purely black or it’s like kind of like that more darkish gray it’s all that kind of volcanic style of rock is what a lot of these mountains are made of and so that is what this area got its name from but again if you ask the locals their country is known as Zagora and I think I pronounced that right if I didn’t I’m going to get a smack upside the head by my friend Alexandra who is beat it into my head many times how to pronounce it but anyway yeah so we’re at the top of the Fortress and it is well well worth coming up here so enjoy the views guys we’ll head down and uh check out the rest of illtown [Music] by the way the trail that we talked about earlier in the video when we were down at the restaurant that I showed you guys kind of like was a back Trail up the mountain as you can see it kind of snakes all the way all the way up to the top but there are off branches that come down here to what I believe is older forts like roads of the older Fort up here older Church um like there was I think historically they’ve been able to find evidence of of even like prehistoric like uh ring forts up here uh during like Neolithic time so it’s kind of cool lot of great history up here and like I said there’s more than one route up the [Music] mountain and of course now the sun is out beautiful lovely except for the fact that it shows that this mountain hats me this is the third time I’ve now climbed this mountain uh third time going up to the Fortress every time I do it the weather gets worse as I go up at least this time the wind wasn’t too bad it wasn’t too cold and it didn’t rain although it did threaten actually did there was a couple sprinkles up there but it wasn’t bad the last two times it’s been every time I go up the further up I get the worse it gets as I begin to come down it lessens and lessens until it’s nice and like this by the time I get to the bottom this mountain hates me I love it I will continue to climb it anytime I come here but the mountain itself just doesn’t seem to reciprocate my feelings it’s very sad [Music] so after a successful hike nothing better than a little gelato there’s actually probably almost like half a dozen gelas um or ice cream shops around Oldtown cotor not all of them are open during the offseason but of course during summer season they’re all popping so but anyway little U it was called antistress so a little anti-stress for the stress on my knees from going down I don’t know why it always hurts more going down I just cuz it’s like you’re putting more weight going down on it but man my legs were shaking when I got to the bottom of that so anyway cheers to you guys a little ice cream mixed berry it’s actually really nice very nice I made a friend hello little one how are you as I said the cats of goor they’re pretty people friendly you’re looking to just kind of oh you’re going to get paw staining Paws all over my your wet paws all over my pant oh you are adorable though yeah hello just want some loveing [Music] so one of the major things I do highly recommend when you’re in cotour take advantage of the fact that it is a walled Castle town and it has walls that you can come up to the top of it’s free just look for specific staircases you can’t really circumvent the entire area because a lot of them are blocked off but there are plenty of sections of wall both on the North and the South side where I’m at where you can basically come up get some great pictures get some great views it it gives you different angles of the town that you don’t see of course obviously from when you’re inside and of course when you’re up on the Mountaintop it’s a little bit more of a bird’s eyee view this kind of gives you a different take and different angles also they do on the south side or excuse me on the North side here I believe they do have summer concerts up here there is a section that’s gated off right now they do have summer concerts up here so if you’re here during the summertime there’s a potential that you could have a summer concert on top of the walls in codor [Music] [Music] all right so we’ve made it to the south side of the Old Town of cure and I am up top on the gdick Bastion and that is the Bastion that is just above the gtic or the southern gate what’s actually cool about that gate is that it does have a drawbridge and I think if you didn’t have that seal railing there that kind of locks it into place I think that could technically be an active drawbridge because it still has the mechanism to bring it up and down so it is rather fascinating it does have this beautiful little like pool shall we say right in front of it as a moat to be fair and then of course you do have a the southern view of the Fortress and the walls that go all the way up and of course modern cure on the outside but yeah this is is really kind of cool it’s a little bit more quiet but this is the second part of the ramp parts of the walls that you can come up to when you’re here in [Music] cotour all right I have climbed the mountain to see a fortress I have walked up and down the walls ofor and throughout the city I need a little bit of a break and right next to the uh guch or the gik gate uh down the main alley that comes from it there is this place called Banda Pub it’s a Back Alley Pub it says authentic Pub I’m usually a little shall we say suspicious of anything that claims to be authentic but pricewise I got a half lit beer that a big beer for about less than4 so given that the rest of the places that you go in Oldtown are probably about six for this it’s about as authentic as you’re going to get so cheers to you guys oh I needed that all right guys so the sun has gone down so we’ll go out in just a little bit to go get some dinner so I’m going to kind of like take a shower rest up and then I’ll see you guys for dinner in just a sec and we’re back out and now it is time for dinner [Music] all right so for dinner we’ve done something similar that we did for breakfast you know for breakfast we went north of the uh the river outside of town we’ve come back outside Town however we got South this is a place called mirenda and I super excited it’s basically a St house I’m not getting a steak cuz the steaks can be a little pricey although they’re not as bad as in downtown or at least right in the old town however I am getting a sausage platter myself with a little bit of bread and kimock to go with it and all that together is like maybe about 13 14 so we’re going to try the bread with the kimock first I’m going to get as much kok as I possibly can in this part of the world and we got this massive sausage platter for like € 10 total and it’s just fantastic got three different types of sausages that one’s good there this one’s more like a Frankfurter that’s FAS well and then you got the big bad boy right here oh man smells good too all of those phenomenal com of plate of fries like I said all of this right here €14 so you can find cheap places for like at least places with cheap meals for you know a very very good price obviously this place I checked out some of their steaks it is a little bit more higher ends uh but it is not as bad as if I were to try to get that same steak in Oldtown so if you are here in goor I recommend Miranda’s really [Music] good all right well that dinner was fantastic and this whole day has been absolutely amazing climbing the Fortress going around town it has been phenomenal and it’s kind of cool to kind of see this many people that I saw today in town in like I’m filming this in January and it’s just like there’s still so many people I had not expected that the last couple of times I’ve been here I’d been in like November and then I’d been also in January and there was no one here and a lot of places were closed now it’s like there’s more places open there’s more things to do even during the offseason obviously it’s nothing compared to what this Bay and this town is like during the summertime but even right now it’s like I I I was able to talk to people I was able to meet people I was able to just kind of like go around and really experience cotour without the mass crowds but just enough to give it some life it was actually kind of cool it’s kind of sad that it is slowly becoming a big uh travel destination thus uh the amount of people are coming and of course also the prices go up sadly but outside of that is so so great to be back here in cotor I love Montenegro just in general and cotor has a special place in my heart so but anyway guys I have some drying of laundry to finish before I take off tomorrow for de brnik so stay tuned for that video uh we’ll be going here from cotor Montenegro to De brnik Croatia and you guys will want to stay tuned for that part of the trip but anyway if you have any comments go Ahad and leave or if you have any questions go and leave those down in the comments and of course if you like the video give it a big old thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already hit that notification Bell and of course if you want to help support the channel I do have a patreon page and a buy me a coffee account and I do so very much appreciate all the support uh but until we meet again guys peace out and have a great night [Music]

Join me on the ultimate tour of Kotor, Montenegro as we explore the top things to do in this charming town. From hidden gems to budget-friendly eats, I’ll show you all the best spots in Kotor’s old town. From climbing the mountain to visit the fortress above. To walking along the walls and visiting the historic churches along the way. Get ready for a day filled with history, culture, and delicious food!
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Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
2:28 – Breakfast
5:24 – Hidden Waterfall
7:01 – Tour of Old Town
8:30 – Climbing the Mountain
11:04 – Best Views of Kotor
17:15 – The top of Kotor Fortress
22:38 – Gelato and the Cats of Kotor
24:09 – The Walls of Kotor
26:53 – Beer O’clock
28:00 – Kotor at night and Dinner