Kotor Bay,Montenegro – one of the Mediterranean’s greatest landscapes and one of the world’s great sail-ins on a cruise ship.Credit:iStock
The bay is ringed with Renaissance towns,as if bits of Venice have snapped off and drifted down the Adriatic Sea to lodge on the flanks of these sunny shores. Two chunks are still afloat in the bay. One is paved in semaphoring marble and topped by a chapel. On the other,tall dark cypress trees conceal a rustic monastery.
I’m on an Azamara cruise between Barcelona and Venice,and this day in Montenegro might be the best of many highlights. I’m up early,pacing the decks of Azamara Pursuit as it approaches Kotor Bay’s narrow opening.
Only pernickety geologists would care that this is not strictly a fjord,which is created by glaciers,but rather a sunken river valley of eroded karst.
In all but name this is a fjord that has taken a holiday in the sun. It has the same closed-in,cliff-dramatic splendour,and allows you similarly to sail inland in improbable directions. The journey down Kotor Bay is one of the great moments in cruising.
The first widening of Kotor Bay is rather gentle,forest covered,and flanked with white villas. The town of Herceg-Novi drifts past,fronted by a golden beach and backed by a hilltop church.
Then the ship turns a corner through some narrows. The next bay is bigger,the towns larger,the hills craggier. Porto Montenegro heaves up the hillside in a pile of yellow apartment blocks,leftover fortifications and church spires.
An Azamara cruise ship sailing into Kotor Bay.
The hills shoulder in again at Verige Strait,which is just 340 metres wide. Passengers exclaim at the railings as the ship slides through. You could almost reach out and touch the terracotta-roofed chapel to starboard and the chic-looking cafe to port.