Montenegro 🇲🇪 and Croatia 🇭🇷
We’re falling behind. Two days to report on in this blog. A day after visiting Corfu, our captain skillfully navigated this large vessel through a complicated network of fjords to the port of Kotor in Montenegro. If you’re like me, you probably thought that fjords exist only in Norway. Not so, it turns out. Now that I’ve learned that they occur in warmer climates, it seems far more plausible that the parrot in Monte Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch would be pining for them (My apologies if you don’t get the reference).
The approach to Kotor was breathtakingly beautiful, and we got up very early to enjoy the scenery as we sailed past. This was the only stop on our cruise where we had to drop anchor and be shuttled to shore aboard tender boats. The process was well organized and efficient. Kudos to Princess for that.
Once on dry land, we made our way into the walled city, which proved to be a catacomb of narrow streets and paths that had us quite unsure how many times we viewed the same locations. We did confirm the one fact about Kotor that we had heard before arrival…. that the town is populated by a certain number of people and a huge number of cats. They even have a Cat Museum, which we were unable to find. It was probably hidden behind a bunch of cats. The souvenir stores seemed to be filled with nothing but cat stuff as well. Cat tote bags, cat tea towels, hand painted hairballs…. you name it.
The other thing we had seen on YouTube about Kotor was that there were amazing views to be seen by climbing the path up to the fort which overlooks the city. We thought we might do this, but the 33 degree heat convinced us to go back to YouTube to see the views there instead.
Our last full day of our cruise took us to the Croatian city of Split. This port has a beautiful waterfront, and the primary destination for tourists there is the Diocletian Palace. Within its walls is another maze which is designed to confound all who successfully made it out of the one in Kotor. We found our way inside the palace walls through a side entrance and paid for an admission ticket which we thought granted us access to the place. It turned out, though, that our ticket was only good to get us into the cellar. As cellars go, it was a fairly interesting cellar, but it was troubling to find an entirely different euro extraction system once we climbed the stairs. We chose from a lengthy list of combination tickets that parceled the various spaces of the palace in different ways. Our ticket included the Crypt, a place that more accurately could have labeled as “Empty Room”. There was not not even a sign on the wall to tell us what we would have been looking at if in fact there was anything there to look at at all. We have not included any photos of this attraction.
We were fortunate not to have purchased a ticket that included the “Bell Tower”. This is a narrow unventilated cylinder with steps that are unnaturally tall for the leg length of an average human. We were grateful that the ticket seller warned us that we would likely fry if we tried to do this in 30+ degree weather. We bought gelato instead.
The Diocletian Palace was by far the busiest place we’ve seen yet on this trip. It was not a hard decision to cut our shore visit short to return to ship and exploit our beverage package to celebrate Debbie’s birthday. We discovered that the Majestic Princess had run out of the brand of beer we had been drinking. Now we feel personally responsible.
For our last night’s meal we splurged for the lobster dinner, and then Debbie joined granddaughter Avery as being the only family members to have been serenaded on their birthday by a multinational squadron of tone deaf waiters in a foreign land.
Sad to say, the birthday celebrations were interrupted by the need to pack. We’re coming to the close of the maritime portion of our vacation. The consolation is that there’s still plenty of adventure ahead. Stay tuned.
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