cold spring water under warm bay water, twenty five hairpins
Reserve nine nights on the Bay of Kotor, June starts
We reserve nine nights in a stone house on the Perast waterfront, two rooms deep and four floors high, from $2,559 per person on two sharing. The bay behind it is a drowned river valley with walls of grey limestone standing about 3,000 feet out of salt water, and the town on its shore holds 274 residents, sixteen churches and a bell tower you can climb for a euro. Two of the days go out on the water and one goes over the pass.
Nine nights, from $2,559 per person.
You can reserve nine nights on the Bay of Kotor in June and in no other month. The rooms in Perast are let by the week between the last Saturday in May and the first Saturday in July; the family who run the boat keep a full timetable only while the water is warm; the driver we use for the pass goes back to school runs in the middle of September. Starts are Saturdays, any Saturday in the month, and it is the same room for all nine nights.
The shape is plain. You unpack once, in one town, and everything either comes to you or sits within an hour of the front door. Two of the days go out on the water. One goes up the mountain road behind Kotor and over the ridge to a village at 900 meters. The rest are yours, which in a town 400 meters long from the first house to the last means swimming, the bell tower, the stone stair to the abandoned houses above Stoliv, and a great deal of sitting still.
Perast holds 274 residents and sixteen churches, and that ratio is the whole history of the place. Families here put their sons on other people's ships for four hundred years and the money came home as stone. Seventeen of the houses are palaces with carved window surrounds and interior courtyards, and roughly a third of those still have no roof on them. The through road was taken out of the middle of the town years ago, so a car stops at the eastern end and you walk the last 400 meters along the water with the bags on a trolley.
When it goes
Weekly Saturday starts through June
any week in one month: weekly starts through the month, and no other month works
What is reserved
Nine nights on the Bay of Kotor
Nine nights, from $2,559 per person. Send a booking request
Nothing on this page belongs to us. The room is the family's, the boat is the boat owner's, the car is the driver's, and each of them bills you directly, on their own account, for what they hand over. What we do is hold the nine nights against your two names, put the days in an order that works around the ferry queues and the ship mornings in Kotor, and write down who you speak to when you are standing there.
One double room held for nine nights under both names, two half day outings on the water, one car and one driver for the mountain day, and no move of rooms or repacking at any point.
The bay is four basins joined by three narrows, and the tightest of them, the Verige strait, is about 340 meters across, which is why the old defenders could string a chain over it. Perast sits just inside that narrow on the north shore, so the town looks south across a mile of water at the ridge of Vrmac rather than out at open water. The sun clears the mountain behind the houses at about a quarter to eight in the morning and drops behind Vrmac at about half past seven at night, roughly an hour before it actually sets, which makes the end of the day long, blue and still warm off the stone. Two islets lie 200 meters offshore, one of them natural with cypresses and a monastery, the other built up by hand from stones dropped over the side of boats across four centuries until there was ground enough to carry a church. Water in the bay runs about 71 Fahrenheit in the first week of June and about 76 in the last, but the mountains are limestone and the rain that falls on them comes back out as springs under the surface, so near Ljuta and Morinj you cross a cold column eight degrees below the water on either side of it. On the ridge above Risan, at Crkvice, the annual rainfall is close to 190 inches, which is the European record, and June sits on the dry edge of it at roughly two and a half inches spread over six days.
Nine nights in a double room with a bay window in a stone house in Perast, breakfast every morning; the road transfer from the airport at Tivat, about 12 miles and 25 minutes each way; two half day outings on the water, held and licensed by the family that owns the boat, who bill you for that water time on their own account; the five minute crossing to the built islet and entry to its church; one car with an English speaking driver for the full day over the pass to Njeguši and up to 5,400 feet; entry to the Roman floor mosaics at Risan; a walking morning in Kotor with a local guide starting at eight, before the ships are in; a written list of bus times, boat times and the two afternoons the small shop shuts; and a telephone number in Perast that answers in June.
The flight from the middle of the United States to the Adriatic and back, which you book yourself, $980 to $1,640 return depending on how many changes you will accept; lunches and dinners, $14 to $38 a head; the bell tower climb, $1 to $2; the walls above Kotor, about $9 in June, gate open from eight; the boat into the sea cave on the peninsula, $22 to $30 a head, run by the boat's owner and settled with him on the day; a second driver day if you want the far end of the bay, $130 to $170; drinks, coffee at $2 and a bottle of local red at $12 to $22; tips, $0 to $20 across the nine days, and nobody asks; laundry at the house, about $9 a load; and anything to do with documents or health, which this office does not answer on.
The house has 41 stone steps to the upper rooms and no lift, and the room with the bay window is on the third floor. The mountain day is twenty five numbered hairpins in about seventeen miles, an hour and twenty minutes of it, and anybody who reads in a car should not, because the last part is 461 steps through a tunnel at 5,400 feet in whatever weather the ridge is having that morning. Perast shuts early: one small shop, no cash machine outside bank hours, no nightlife of any kind, and by half past eleven the waterfront is dark and the only sound is water against stone. If nine nights in a town of 274 people sounds long to you, it will be.
The bay is a drowned river valley and it behaves like one
This is not a fjord, whatever you were told. No glacier cut it. A river valley sank, salt water came in behind, and what is left is four basins joined by three narrows. The tightest of them, the Verige strait, is about 340 meters across, and the vehicle ferry over it runs every fifteen minutes around the clock, five minutes on the water, with thirty cars waiting on a late June evening. From Perast you look south over a mile of water at the Vrmac ridge rather than at open horizon, and that governs the light. The sun clears the mountain behind the houses at about a quarter to eight and goes behind Vrmac at about half past seven at night, an hour before it truly sets, so the last part of the day is long and blue and the stone gives its heat back until eleven.
The limestone shows up in the water as well. Rain that lands on the ridge returns under the surface as cold springs, and swimming out from the platform near Ljuta you will cross a column eight degrees colder than the water either side of it, with no warning at all. The surface runs about 71 Fahrenheit in the first week of June and about 76 in the last. Above Risan, at Crkvice, the year takes close to 190 inches of rain, which is the European record. June is the dry edge of that: two and a half inches or so across six days, and it tends to come as one hard afternoon and then stop.
Two days on the water, and one of them starts at eight
The first water day is short and local. Two islets lie 200 meters off the waterfront. One is natural, with cypresses and a monastery standing on it. The other was made: crews dropped stones over the side for four centuries until there was ground enough to build a church, and the town still does that every twenty second of July, six weeks after you have gone home. Inside there are sixty eight silver plaques left by men who got back, and a tapestry a woman worked at for twenty five years using gold thread and her own hair, so the hair in it turns grey across the picture as she aged. The crossing takes five minutes. The boat is the owner's, licensed to him, and the water time is on his bill rather than ours.
The second day is longer and runs toward the mouth of the bay: the tunnels cut into the shore for small submarines, a round fort on its own island that is now a hotel and takes no callers, and a sea cave on the peninsula where light comes up through the water from underneath and colors it. That cave has a four meter entrance and boats only go in when the sea is flat, which makes it the one thing on this page that weather can cancel outright. When it does, the day becomes the mussel and oyster lines strung between Ljuta and Orahovac, worked at six in the morning, and they are better company than they sound.
Kotor is eight miles down the shore and the morning there begins at eight for a reason. When two large ships are alongside, the old town is shoulder to shoulder from ten until four and Perast takes a wave of coaches from eleven until three. Either side of those hours both are empty. The walls above Kotor are 1,350 steps to the fort at 260 meters, the gate opens at eight, and there is no shade whatsoever on the lower ramp.
road transfer from Tivat, 12 miles, about 25 minutes, then the walk in along the water
the two islets, the sixty eight plaques, the bell tower at 55 meters for a euro
Kotor on foot from eight, the walls before the heat, back on the half past twelve bus
yours; the stone stair to the abandoned houses at Gornji Stoliv, 45 minutes up through chestnut
the pass: twenty five hairpins, the village at 900 meters, the 461 steps at the top
yours; swimming, the cold spring column near Ljuta, nothing at all asked of you
the long day toward the mouth of the bay, or the shellfish lines if the sea is up
Risan for the Roman floors, twenty minutes of mosaic and the sleeping god on it
yours, then out early Monday on the road transfer
The road to Njeguši, and the 461 steps at the end of it
The mountain day is the one people remember and the one that suits fewest people. From sea level at Kotor the old road climbs to 900 meters in about seventeen miles through twenty five numbered hairpins, and it takes an hour and twenty minutes because it cannot be done any faster. Several of the turns are single width with a stone parapet and a long drop below, and a big vehicle physically will not get round them, which is why the car is small and the man driving it grew up on that road. Njeguši sits on the shelf at the top, where the air changes direction between water and mountain twice a day and the ham is hung in that draught for months on end. Past the village the road carries on to Jezerski Vrh at 1,657 meters, five thousand four hundred feet, and the last stretch is 461 steps up a tunnel cut through the rock. It can be 84 degrees on the waterfront and 61 with cloud sitting on your head at the top, on the same morning, and there is nothing in between but the road you came up.
The long leg is yours, and this is what is held at our end
No air ticket is sold here and none sits inside the figure at the top. You arrange that leg yourself, into Tivat or into Podgorica, then tell us which airport and at what hour, and the road transfer is written against it. People who land in the evening should know that the last stretch of that drive is dark, single lane in places and slow.
Write with the Saturday you want and both names spelled the way they will appear on your own booking for the long leg. A price built against the dates you actually named, rather than the figure on this page, comes back inside two to four working days, and it names the room, the floor it stands on, the boat owner, the driver and exactly what each of them will bill you for. No money crosses this office at all: every bill comes from the company running the part of the trip it belongs to, on that company's own account. Third Coast Dispatch Bookings LLC does business as Third Coast Dispatch from 600 SW Jefferson St, Suite 302, Lee's Summit, MO 64063, in the Kansas City metro in Missouri. The telephone is +1 (816) 525-2846, dates and names go to bookings@thirdcoastdispatch.com, and if anything on this page has gone out of date, corrections@thirdcoastdispatch.com is where to say so.
Ask the office to hold a departure
Open 24/7, this form will take a booking request whenever you write it. Nowhere on it is a card number requested and nothing is charged, because no money is ever owed to this office. Whatever reaches the form is opened in the order it landed, and an answer goes back inside one working day.
Nowhere on this page is a card number requested, and none is kept by this office anywhere. Writing costs you nothing and ties you to nothing. Asking is not the same as holding: your date belongs to whoever asks next until the operating company has confirmed it on paper and you have read what it requires of you.