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