Well, good morning guys. It is another beautiful day here in Kotor (Котор) so we decided to take a day trip. So we’re going to be hopping on a bus and visiting Perast (Perasto) which is a small little town also by the water. Once we’re there we can hop on a boat and go visit a few islands so it should be a nice day. The cool thing about this is that it is really close to where we’re staying. We can actually grab a local transportation not too far from where we are right now. So we’re just going to do that. We don’t have a lot of time so let’s go!!!
Okay, so right now we are waiting to catch the bus. We know it is called the blue line we know it should be about 1 Euro if the prices haven’t gone up. What we don’t know is where the bus stop is located. Reading in the forums and asking at information apparently there is no bus stop. You just wait near the market, hail it down but we’re the only ones here right now. Is this the right spot?! We’ll see how it goes!!
We did manage to find the bus, though it involved running up the street since we were in the wrong spot, but aside from that, it was a quick 20-minute ride up the coast to Perast. We have made it to Perast (Perasto). I guess now we can explain where the bus departs from. Yes!!! It is closer to the south gate right than to the sea gate. It is like before the market starts exactly. There is like bus painted on the street, in like yellow letters. Exactly and you’ll see people waiting outside for it as well. There is a whole bunch of benches and there is like a little park area. That is the bus stop.
Booking.comWe have arrived here and it looks beautiful. I think we’re going to start with a little walk through the town and then maybe do the islands a bit later. Yeah, exactly the main thing we’ll be doing today is actually taking the boat out to visit the islands. So it’s going to be really fun. Let’s get started. Located on the Bay of Kotor, Perast is a small town that hit its peak in the 18th century under the Venetian Republic. During this time, it had as many as four active shipyards and the citizens of the town were allowed to trade and sell goods without tax on the Venetian market. This made them very wealthy, and while today Perast has more of a sleepy vibe, you can still see traces of that wealth in the number of Palazzo’s that line the waterfront.
Well we had a pretty good wander around the town. It is definitely cute and charming. At the moment there is a lot of restoration work going on and also some of the main buildings such as the cathedral appear to be closed. Because it is low season. Let me tell you what the date is exactly. It is November 18th at the moment. We’re very much into low season and unfortunately we couldn’t go inside some of these buildings but we did have a pretty good wander. Yes. So now it is time to catch the boat and we’re going to go and check out those two little island churches.
Alright guys so we just bought our tickets and now we’re waiting for the next boat. It turns out only one of the two islands is open right now. We’ll visit what is available. It is 5 Euros per person. And that is for a return ticket and apparently from the information we’ve been able to gather it appears that the boat frequency is about every 5 or 10 minutes. We’ll be getting on really soon. So the boat frequency turned out to be more like 30 minutes -that morning we learned “just 5 minutes” should not be taken literally- but we did eventually board a boat and we had it all to ourselves. We have our own private boat taxi. No one else on board.
There are two islands off the coast of Perast (Perasto). One is St. George (Ostrvo Sveti Đorđe), which holds an old monastery and is not open to visitors, and the other is Our Lady of the Rocks (Gospa od Škrpjela), which we visited. The latter is an artificial island that was created by sinking old ships loaded with rocks. Here you’ll find the Church of Our Lady of the Rocks, which is the main attraction.
To be honest, this is a quick visit and you likely won’t need more than 15-20 minutes on the island, but you do get some nice views of the surrounding mountains. It is just so cool like you know going inside the church, walking around the little island here and also that drone shot was pretty epic. And now we’ve got a pretty sweet ride on the way back.
We’re upfront because we’re not part of the regular tourist group and I think they get priority seating. But to be honest this is priority seating for us. Awesome for filming. Yeah. This is so good for filming. It is like I don’t know if they put us up here for that reason or if they know that we’re filming so anyways we’ve got it good.
Travel and enjoy good food
Then, after that little excursion we could only think about one thing: Lunch! So we found ourselves a lovely little restaurant. Oh yeah over here by the waterfront. It is called Armonia Perast. And we saw some other people just out there actually sitting out right by the harbor and having like coffee and food. It looks so good.
We went for pasta. We got some beautiful looking pastas. Sam here has the Tagliatelle with mushrooms pesto and shrimps. Look at the size of those shrimps. Like there is just so many in there. I’m going to be grabbing two. I can’t wait to try that. I’ve already had a bite of your food. It is homemade fresh pasta guys. This is the best food we’ve had in the country so far. We’ve been here almost a week and that says a lot. This is by far the best food we’ve had and for my pasta dish. I went for the gnocchi in a cream spinach sauce and it has these chopped walnuts all over. It is so creamy. Oh the walnuts are big. They are huge. And we also got a basket full of bread. So this is going to be wonderful for dipping the sauce.
Dessert is here at the table. Tell us?! I’m already full from the pasta but this just looks so good. So this is called Perast cake. Yep. And it is made with a lot of nuts. I think a lot of almonds. The waiter said 90% almonds. It does look very thick but before I even try that I’m going to have my cafe-latte here. Alright let’s try this. And he said this cake goes best with coffee. What cake doesn’t go well with coffee? It is really dense, it is really thick and very nutty. So to wrap things up that was a beautiful meal. As we said before the best we’ve had in Montenegro so far.
In terms of price point that came to 30 Euros in total and that included a big soda water for us to share, lots of complimentary bread, two pasta dishes, a dessert to share and two coffees at the end. Some lattes in fact. So that was I thought excellent value. The food was like gourmet delicious. Highly recommend going there and we have about 30 minutes to spare until our bus comes so we’re going to try and do a little bit more exploring and maybe get the drone up. After Sam’s drone session, we had enough time to climb up to visit one more church, and then it was pretty much time to call it a day.
Youtube: Samuel and Audrey – Travel and Food Videos
Perast is a charming seaside town, but it’s very small and some of the tourist sights weren’t open so there wasn’t much to do, but it’s great for a half-day trip if you want to see something aside from Kotor (Котор)!
Alright guys so here we are wrapping up a lovely little day trip from Kotor (Котор). Yeah, it sure was lovely and such an affordable trip. I mean we only paid 1 Euro each way. And we’re just waiting to catch the bus. It should be coming in 10 minutes. It comes on the half hour. Every half hour. So we’re catching the 1:30 back. And so yeah just a few hours here is enough time really.
You can wander around the old town, you can take a boat ride out to the islands, have a nice comfortable lunch. Do maybe a little bit more exploring. And then you’re ready to go back. So it makes for a great half day trip I would say. And next up on the channel we have Budva. Yeah, Budva is next. See you guys there.