Day 32: Kotor, Montenegro

G was urging me awake just after 6am this morning. Although sunrise didn’t occur until 6:40am, we could see the earliest light of day looking out our window. We were up in the Panorama Buffet just a few minutes later, and, although Maps.me showed that we had a long way to go before reaching Kotor, the views were already starting. We got some breakfast and alternated between watching from our table in the buffet and going out on the Panorama Deck to take photos. It was COLD at that hour of the morning. 

The Pacific Princess eventually made the sharp turn to starboard, and we knew to look for Perast and the two small islands in the Bay of Kotor that are home to an abbey and church. The views just kept getting better and better as the tall mountains rose high above the water, and the sun started making its way down the mountainsides as it rose in the sky. 

Just entering the fiord about 6:45am (sunrise was at 6:40am)

First hint of sunrise

I think this is Jošice, Montenegro

The narrowest part of the Bay of Kotor near Perast

The Kasona Mountains above Perast, Montenegro

Our Lady of the Rocks

The island of St. George and its Benedictine Abbey

Beautiful Perast and the Church of St. Nikolas bell tower

Seeing the sun come down the mountains in the west as it rose made my day! 

I love that!

The Kasona Mountains above Perast

Finally we could see the closed end of the bay, where the town of Kotor is located. We were lucky today, and were able to dock instead of tendering, just another advantage of this small ship and visiting here so late in the season. 

Early morning in Kotor 

Orthodox Church in Muo, Montenegro


In Kotor at the end of the Bay of Kotor

We were off the ship shortly after it was cleared by the local authorities. It was still very cold, and we wore jackets, hats and gloves. We made it only as far as the bar right on the pier, where we found excellent WiFi, and I uploaded five photos at a time to this blog post. Five at a time! That’s not something I can usually do until we get home or to Hawaii. While uploading was speedy, adding photos is still time consuming. I have to research and write the captions, and could only do that today because of the good WiFi. Still, when it came to the church in Muo, I was having trouble identifying just where that was located. I pestered an amiable taxi driver, showing him the photo and asking, “Where?”. He called over two more drivers and one of them knew it was in a town that sounded like “Moor”.  But he didn’t know the name of the church. Well, studying Maps.me showed it was not Moor but Muo. Once I knew that, I searched and found there are two churches in Muo, with lots of interior photos online but no exterior photos. So I could narrow it down no further. 

Yep, adding photos to my blog takes high speed WiFi, battery life…and time. 

We walked to the small mall near the walled old town to find a couple of toiletry items we needed and returned with our purchases to the ship. We both needed to recharge our batteries after our WiFi session, plus we were freezing, so we plugged in and got something warm to eat and drink from the Panorama Buffet. After that short intermission, we again bundled up and this time walked through the city gate into the walled old town. 

We spent the next couple of hours wandering and exploring some of the lesser traveled alleys dating back over 500 years. It is fascinating to study the architecture and try to determine what things were used for and how they were built. Though the day had started sunny, it had quickly turned cloudy and, while we were wandering, a light rain began to fall. That really cleared most of our fellow guests out of the old town, and we had it almost to ourselves at that point, which was very surreal, but eventually the rain made the stone streets ridiculously slick and, for our own safety, we exited through a side gate and walked back to the ship via a city sidewalk. 

Old Town Kotor alleys

Stairs everywhere, leading to stone buildings built into the city walls. 

Wet rock streets get very slick when it rains (speaking from experience here; luckily, we remained standing)

Exiting through a side gate in the wall, we looked back  to see the fortifications running up the mountain. 

Though we tried to get that high speed WiFi again, we couldn’t. Also, for the first time this season, though we had received a welcome text from Telekom Montenegro when we took our phones off Airplane Mode, we never actually had service today. Well, one miss in all the ports to date isn’t too bad. 

By 4pm we were on the ship for good, so we quickly got cleaned up for the evening and went up to the P/E/S Lounge in the Pacific Lounge. It was beautiful as it got dark (sunset was at 4:20pm!) and the city lights came on.  We later watched from our table in the Club Restaurant as the Pacific Princess sailed at 6pm, and it was just spectacular to see all the lights along our way as we sailed back out of the Bay of Kotor. 

The ship was totally stable tonight, and the dancers adequately recovered from yesterday’s bouncy seas, so production show Do You Wanna Dance was performed at 7:45pm. We had just seen this show performed on the Sapphire Princess with a large cast, so it was fun to see it slimmed down with just six dancers and two vocalists on the Pacific Princess. For years, during the Thai dancing part of the show, I would turn to G and whisper, “We have to get to Thailand some day”. Well, it looks like someday will soon be here. 

Life is good. :-)

Day 45: Kotor, Montenegro

This will be very short tonight. We were up early this morning due to the Pacific Princess' 7am arrival into Kotor and G was again the first passenger off the ship, hoping to use the WiFi in the small wine bar called The Terminal. Though the wine bar was still closed, its WiFi was turned on, but G had a issue involving our router at home (don't get me started on Comcast internet reliability...) and was not successful in resolving it. He returned to the ship and we had a leisurely breakfast in the Panorama Buffet. The weather was grey and chilly, and though it wasn't raining first thing this morning, a light rain did start by 11am or so and continued throughout the day. We had intended to spend part of the day walking around the walled Old Town, but we quikcly changed our minds. We've seen it in sun and didn't particularly need to see it in rain. 

Instead we both returned to The Terminal, ordered tea and coffee and happily Interneted for a couple of hours. G did a remote reset of our home router and then managed to remotely jump through a few more hoops and got it all running perfectly again. We could finally check our thermostat and security webcams, and then put that out of our minds...until it happens again. At just a few minutes after noon, I phoned Mom using Vonage (For free! Get the app!!), and then called her two additional times as I booked an airline ticket to visit her for a week over Mothers Day. I was particularly excited at the fare I was able to get flying directly into Toledo (she lives 10 minutes from the airport) and that's what motivated me to book today. 

Our iPhone batteries were almost depleted, so we returned to the ship to recharge them. We went for lunch in the Panorama Buffet and shared a table with a couple from Minnesota and hit it off so well that we sat and talked for two hours. It's funny...I'm not a particularly social person, particularly after almost seven weeks of cruising, but we have met such nice people on these cruises that I've found it easy to become one. About 2:30pm we returned to The Terminal (our Deck 4 cabin is so darn convenient for getting on and off the ship) and were joined by Marlene and Paul and drank Montenegrin wine and I downloaded several magazines to read on our transatlantic cruise. I tried downloading more Amazon Prime movies but was prevented from doing so because of the country I was in. Ditto with Comcast TV On Demand programming. The videos we leave home with have to last until we return to the US (and perhaps the Starbucks near Port Everglades).  Captain D had shortened our stay in Kotor by 30 minutes to allow him to navigate through the narrowest part of the fiord before it got totally dark so the all on board time became 4pm. We had been keeping on eye on ournfellow returning passengers and when we saw a small group return, followed them back on the ship. We were the last two to reboard the ship and even we were about 10 minutes early. 

We immediately went up to the Panorama Terrace to watch our final sailaway from misty Kotor. I even stood in the rain to take a few eerie looking photos with the clouds hanging low over the steep mountains. Sunset was scheduled for 4:15pm so it wasn't long before we really couldn't see anything any longer, and we warmed up with hot showers that felt heavenly after a chilly wet day, skipped the PES Lounge and went directly to dinner (cioppino and key lime pie!). G went to the 6:45pm performance by comedian Rikki Jay but I wanted more to return to the cabin, prepare this blog post and get caught up with People magazines.  Life truly is good!  :-)

Photos of sailaway from Kotor...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cathedral of St. Tryphon

 

On a completely unrelated subject, we experienced a toilet issue again last night, at about 11:05pm. The Passenger Services Desk (PSD) on this ship closes at 11pm, so when I called their number, I instead reached Room Service. Thinking I had misdialed, I apologized and was ready to hang up before I was assured that I had the right number. Apparently Room Service mans the phones after the PSD closes, and I reported our toilet outage to them (harious). The plumbing was repaired before I was asleep (G always says the plumber who fixes our toilet in the middle of the night is the most important person on this ship and I agree).

Well, tonight I returned to the cabin to find a plateful of hand-made chocolates and a note of apology for the trouble we experienced. We've had these in the past (we call them plumbing perks) and they are amazing. Once again, they led G to comment that a plate of chocolates for a 5-minute plumbing issue was a great trade-off and he was looking forward to the next one. ;-)

Two slower days have helped to heal our bodies after weeks of walking hours each day and climbing hundreds of irregular steps. Captain D said that tomorrow will be another day just like today, weather-wise, in Corfu, Greece. It will be our second visit there this season and we had planned to walk to the Saturday morning local markets and climb to the top of the New Fortress, but it won't take much rain or cold to compel us to spend the day drinking hot choclate in a coffee bar. In our minds, we are slowly beginning to wind down the sightseeing and ease ourselves into sea-day mode for the transatlantic crossing. O

Day 31: Kotor, Montenegro

We awoke this morning to fog so thick that I wondered how Captain D was going to manage to squeeze the Pacific Princess through the narrow passes and around the tiny islands that dot the scenic fiord that is the Bay of Kotor. Somehow he did, but by the time we arrived, the day was drizzly and chilly. I thought for certain that I had been spared the Kotor Death March Climb today, and happily went to breakfast in the Club Restaurant where, for the first time this season, I had six grain toast, peanut butter and iceberg lettuce (that's the family recipe for PB&L, in case you've just recently started reading this blog).

The big thrill this morning was that the Pacific Princess was the only ship in town, and so it was our turn to sit at the grown up table and actually dock instead of tender. And the pier in Kotor is basically right across the street from the walled Old Town. It couldn't be easier. We walked off with a steady steam of crew members who were returning home at the end of their 7 to 9 month contracts,  dragging suitcases and bags behind them and wearing the biggest smiles we had ever seen. We had been told that their visas would not allow them to disembark in Italy or Croatia which is why they were leaving the ship (and being replaced) in tiny Kotor, Montenegro. We stood on the pier for a few minutes and waved goodbye and thanked them and wished them safe travels, a two-person send off committee. It was fun. 

 

The Bay of Kotor

It was still spitting rain when we walked off the ship and with no other plans for the day, we settled in at the very nice wine bar called The Terminal, not coincidentally located right at the port terminal. We both got white hot chocolate which bought us the WiFi password and we sat there warming up and getting caught up with the world and paying bills. G had not been able to check on the webcams at home since Koper and I could tell he was slightly anxious about that so it was especially nice to erase that concern from our list of things to worry about. 

Eventually though, all good things must come to an end, and by late morning the rain stopped and the sun actually made an appearance, which was quite contrary to the weather forecast for today (as Captain D told us later). G started making noises about climbing that mountain to the fort at the top and, just as always happens, I didn't want him to go alone, and that is how I found myself following him into the walled city and out of an arch at the back of the Old Town. The climb to the top of the wall was in many ways like climbing the Great Wall of China but I am nearly 13 years older now and these steps were not wide like on the Great Wall but barely two feet in width. Oh, and did I mention there are 1355 of them, with a 700 foot elevation gain?

Click here for more information on the fortifications of Kotor from Wikipedia

 

The arch that leads to the trail from the Old Town

 

It started out as just a rocky walk

 

Kotor's Old Town with the dome of the Cathedral of St. Tryphon on the right

 

Still not bad...at least there was a wall on one side and a small shoulder on the other

 

The pier, if a ship is lucky enough to be able to dock, is right at the entrance to Old Town

It helped that the day was so chilly but it wasn't long before we were both drenched with sweat. After about 30 minutes of climbing, we reached the halfway point and the Church of Our Lady of Health. We had been told during our walking tour of the Old Town during our last visit that people looking for a cure used to climb the steps to the church on their knees. Well, I can say with great certainty that if they had reached the church on their knees, whatever illness had sent them there would be the least of their issues. The saving grace of all this was that the views of the Old Town and the Bay of the Kotor and the Pacific Princess were stunning.

 

 

Church of Our Lady of Health

 

 

 

 

 

I made it a bit higher; there were fortified towers every so often at the switchbacks, and many of these had walls with large gates. Invaders attempting to take the fort would reach these points and be pummeled with cannon fire from above, with no means of escape. Finally, at one of these I cried 'uncle' and said I was done. As bad as it was going up, I knew coming down those narrow, irregular steps with drop offs on either side was going to be much more difficult. I picked the comfiest looking rock and sat down, waiting for G to finish the climb to the top. It worked well; I gave him the camera and every time he rounded a switchback where he could see me, he waved. 

 

Somewhere along here it stopped being any kind of fun, and I opted to hold down a rock until G returned. 

From this point on, the photos are the ones he took. 

 

 

Once again, G had the most fun imagining life when the wall was actually used for defense hundreds of years ago. The fortresses at several of the switchbacks were barracks, with cooking areas and sleeping areas. At the very top, there was a sheer drop off hundreds of feet down the backside of the mountain with the stone remains of a village at the very bottom. G pointed out to me that the steps we were climbing, as sketchy as they were, were not always there; that a path covered with stone rubble had led the way to the top for hundreds of years and everything needed for life in the towers and at the fort, and in the village on the back side had come up that mountain. And imagine what an effort it had been to haul and place those 1355 steps!

You look at things differently when you travel with my husband!

 

The wall follows the crest of the mountain with steep drop offs on both sides

 

Approaching the Castle of San Giovanni (St. John)

 

 

Castle of San Giovanni 

It took him another 30 minutes or so of climbing to reach the flagged Fortress of St. John at the very top. The photos he took with the Pacific Princess looking like a dot in the distance were breathtaking (to be shared when we return home). It was frightening for me to see the stairs he climbed down...nothing to hold on to and no way to stop himself if he fell.  But he is amazing and had no issues at all. He rejoined me at the rock where I had spent an hour and we picked our way down the mountain. 

 

Coming back down

 

G noticed the track on the floor where the door had dragged when it was opened

 

It became sunnier as we walked down and the mountain looked beautiful with the light on it

 

Ok, that's done, never to be repeated. And I survived. 

 

At the base of the mountain looking up

 

It couldn't be any easier than to come off the mountain and walk right on the ship!

As soon as we started down, I was instantly chilled by the cold air and my wet clothes. We returned to the ship and went to the Panorama Buffet for coffee and hot soup. At 3:45pm, Captain D. announced that everyone was on board and the Pacific Princess would start to sail back out of the Bay of Kotor. We took quick showers and while we were dressing for the evening, could see that it had started to pour and heard hail hitting our porthole window hard. It was just like our first visit here earlier this season. It was dark in the deep fiord by 5pm, but before we went to dinner, we stepped out on the Panorama Terrace to see that the rain had stopped, and we stood there for awhile watching as we sailed past towns on both sides of the bay, with their lights climbing the sides of the mountains. 

Dinner was quick- just salad and salmon for me- and we both had bananas foster made by headwaiter Antonio for dessert. We finished in time to make it to the 6:45pm performance of Irish comedian George Riley. He was very occasionally, very mildly humorous. 'Nuff said. But no matter. We were both nearly asleep by the time the show was over, and G was out like a light as soon as we returned to the cabin. I will be too, as soon as I finish preparing this post. We move clocks ahead one hour overnight, again putting us 7 hours ahead of EST. but we've survived nine port days in a row (and finished the last one in a big way), and are desperate for tomorrow's sea day. The MTP luncheon is scheduled for noon...we should be awake by then. ;-)

I climbed a mountain. Life is good. :-)