Our Home Away From Home in Kotor Overlooking the Breathtaking Bay

Our home away from home in Kotor, Montenegro is an apartment overlooking the breathtaking Bay of Kotor with spectacular views of the UNESCO World Heritage-listed old town of Kotor, a former Venetian port that is a kind of mini-Dubrovnik. The apartment is located in Muo, a twenty-minute or so stroll away from Kotor Old Town, which has its highlights as much as challenges.

It’s probably our own fault, arriving at the popular summer spot of Kotor in Montenegro before the tourist season had properly started. Not to mention that the longest winter anyone could remember had only just decided to do the decent thing and sod off to let spring finally begin.

We got off to a promising start. The changing vistas on the drive here from Podgorica to Kotor were remarkable, from marshlands full of birds to dramatic mountain passes and stunning seafronts. It was a magnificent ride.

But first things, first. We’re not actually staying in the UNESCO World Heritage-listed town of Kotor, an old Venetian port that is a kind of mini-Dubrovnik. Our latest home away from home in Kotor is actually in Muo, a twenty-minute or so stroll away, and it can be more challenging than we imagined to get into Kotor.

Our Home Away From Home in Kotor, Montenegro

The views from our home away from home in Kotor, a holiday apartment with a terrace looking out to the fjord-like Bay of Kotor or Boka Kotorska to the walled town of Kotor, are absolutely stunning. We look onto glassy green water. Fortress walls that snake up the steep sides of the fjord. The pretty little harbour area.

We watch small yachts motoring into the bay, their white hulls leaving shimmering reflections on the water. We hear the afternoon conversations between several species of birds in the trees. Then there are the changing moods of the water, the passing clouds, and the transition from dusk to night.

We would sit and watch that transition most nights, and the beautifully illuminated walls of the Fortress of San Giovanni would not lose their interest. The splendid setting exudes an almost mystical calm in a region where there has been so much turmoil in the past.

But sadly all of this changes, however, when we try to get from our home away from home in Kotor into the old town of Kotor…

A poorly maintained road that for the most part is only a lane and a half wide makes the first ten minutes of walking to the town a nuisance. Many times we’ve found ourselves pressed against the stone wall of a house or teetering on the edge of the road, nervously wondering how cold the water is, as reckless drivers measure a successful passing of another car in millimetres.

Pedestrians are clearly an irritation to drivers here and rarely do they stop – even at crossings – for people to get from one side of the road to the other. I saw one attractive young woman in tight jeans and a cleavage-revealing top make it halfway across a pedestrian crossing only to have a young guy speed up to stop her from completing the crossing. It was probably her boyfriend.

Families with children would definitely need a car if staying here. We’re resisting hiring cars for as long as we can this year, partly in keeping with our slow travel theme, which is driven by our eco-conscious mission to travel more sustainably, and partly because we just love walking. Although we’ve taken taxis a few times because we couldn’t face the (speed)-demons yet again.

All of this is rather frustrating, because the views of Kotor improve as you get closer to the water. From Kotor itself you can see across to where we are staying but the views are much more dramatic from the floor-to-ceiling windows of our apartment. (We’ll tell you more about Kotor in another post – or three!)

Our our home away from home in Kotor is a holiday rental apartment in Muo. It’s a spacious, clean, contemporary apartment in a complex of eight three-storey buildings that sprawl across the mountain slope.

There is a swimming pool, a tiny café, and a small playground up the hill, however, because the summer tourist season hasn’t started yet, the café is not open and the pool hasn’t yet been filled with water. Not that it’s a concern, as it’s still a little chilly at night and we’ve also had a bit of rain.

Our Muo holiday apartment is open-plan with a large living area-cum-dining room-cum-kitchen with a Zanussi stove, a small dishwasher, and a decent-sized fridge. In the living area, there’s a huge flat screen TV and DVD player and a big comfy sofa setting. There are two bathrooms, one with a washing machine, and heating and air-conditioning throughout.

There’s also a huge terrace with table and chairs that looks out over an abandoned warehouse and out to the wonderful water views. But really the details of the Kotor apartment are secondary to those breathtaking Kotor Old Town and mountain views.

Take a look for yourself at the gob-smacking Kotor views in our timelapse taken from the terrace of our home away from home in Kotor.