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. :-)