Only pigeons and fig trees

The best experience of Kotor is approaching it, then leaving it -because it sits at the bottom of a fish-hook-shaped fjord that is gaspingly beautiful. Folding cliffs are fringed at the shore by red-roofed Montenegrin villages, every one featuring a church you ache to visit, several buildings that look damaged and long abandoned, and a trendy cafe or restaurant where you can hear strains of Europop or Muzzein Muzak. We sailed in on glassine water with long threads of cirri still glowing pink
from the sunrise; we sailed out as the currents turned silver, evening cumuli glowered, and the winds from the Adriatic beckoned us to Greece. Kotor itself could be stored in a corner of Dubrovnik, which could be stored in a corner of Venice. It’s a stone grey striving second cousin who points your attention to modest attractions, but oozes self-effacing humor and unctuousness. Here the hard history of the Balkans is less well-disguised and the damage of war and earthquakes less well-repaired. Our hilarious guide Radi, who always addressed us as “Dear and Beautiful People”, traded heavily in ironic jokes and English malapropisms that you came to suspect were part of the shtick. He pointed out one building, a formerly fine home bombed in one of the endless wars in this part of the world: “Now inside is only pigeons and fig trees.” And indeed many figs have sprouted in Kotor’s crevices and two other cruise ships were in port: Kotor’s fruitful years may be ahead.Read more