Monday, September 26th - Kotor, Montenegro
Here's what we could see from the ship when we awoke this morning:
Note: Many photos today were taken by Gael; you can easily tell which ones are hers by the red border..
The approach to Kotor from the sea is one of the most beautiful harbor approaches in the world; don't take my word for it, UNESCO says it's so:
Here's the Regent Seven Seas sister ship, the Mariner, anchored in Boka Katorska bay; it's unusual to have 2/3rds of the fleet in the same place at the same time:
Here's the map of the area with Kotor highlighted with the red star and the yellow route our ship took to get there coming from Corfu to the south:
Today for the first time we didn't have to do the ticket exchange in the Theater; instead we were told just to present ourselves on the pier and find our tour-guide.
We really won the tour-guide lottery today with Stefan; he was great!
Stefan is a Masters candidate at the local university and a native of Kotor. And this time, we were given "whisper paks" which are short-range radio receivers with an earpiece. Stefan had the transmitter and we could all hear him easily without him raising his voice. Made us wish we'd had them before on other tours.
Today is a walking tour of the Old City of Kotor. It's only an hour and a half or so and it was a hazy day so it wasn't too hot.
Montenegro has been an independent state more than once. Part of Yugoslavia originally and now on indpendent status with Serbia & Croatia. Their philosophy is "be happy" and "get along with everyone" and it's working. The currency is the Euro even though they are not (yet) part of the European Union.
The architecture is largely Venetian since Venice was in charge back in the 14-15th century. They had their own major earthquake in 1637 and a lot of restoration has been done over the centuries.
Montenegro's economy depends heavily upon tourism and aluminum production; they have ample deposits of bauxite.
The Old City of Kotor is a series of squares connected by narrow winding lanes; it's easy to get lost (luckily we didn't). Here are the best photos for the day:
The squares were crowded but not just with tourists; Kotor residents crowd them daily.
As you can see from the map below, the Old City of Kotor is a maze (and amazing!):
Now that Gael has decided to unlimber her camera, it seems there's at least one of me each day:
We visited the Maritime Museum; just before we crowded inside, Stefan pointed out his uncle having coffee in the square:
We visited the Christian Orthodox church:
Here you can see part of the "Great Wall of Kotor" built by hand more than 500 years ago. They couldn't even use donkeys or horses to move the stones into position; each was carried by men:
Finally, as we were leaving, the morning haze finally burned off:
This open-air market was just down the street from the Sea Gate to the Old City:
One thing Gael and I both remarked upon: Kotor is full of beautiful young women, more than we've seen since Barcelona a few years back:
Oh, and the kids are cute, too:
Yes the "sacred dog syndrome" has infected Montenegro as well:
..and where will you find Gael?
We were back at the ship for lunch and a lazy (read: drunken) afternoon on the pool deck. Oddest thing; some people actually get into the pool -- makes drinking safely more of an iffy process to our way of thinking...
We spent a lovely hour chatting with Fiona Jessica Wilson, the UK soprano who sang two nights on our cruise. She's very attractive and she laughed at the proper places at all of our stories; so we liked her a lot:
After our standard hot and cold hors d'oeuvres delivered at 5pm by our butler, Trevor, we made our way down to Deck 4 to pick up our passports. They took them when we first boarded the ship to avoid losing them on an excursion. It was a good idea; a guest today told us she'd hiked on a mountain in Monemvasia and saw a US passport unrecoverably 20+ feet down a hole. At any rate, Dubrovnic apparently requires visitors to have their passports with them so we picked ours up.
We got underway at 7pm for our overnight trip to Dubrovnic, Serbia. Looking back at Kotor we saw that they light their Great Wall at night; while I don't have a tripod with me, I did my best to capture the scene with a time-exposure:
Another couple was trying the same thing so we had them take our picture together:
After visiting da boyz in the casino at the slots:
..we had an excellent dinner in the Compass Rose Restaurant, visited the onboard lending library and headed for our suite. I'm a-typin', she's a-readin'. Up early tomorrow for our tour of Dubrovnik!
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