Kotor (Montenegro)

Thursday 29^th August

It was lovely to have the clocks put forward for this day, seeing it was an early start. Our tender ticket had us leaving the ship at 8:30!

The part of Kotor that we visited is a pedestrian area, the old town dating back to the 12^th and 13^th centuries. It was beautiful. The whole time we kept saying how much we wished we had more time there. (The ship arrived at 7am and departed at 1pm.) It was a town for wandering. We could have gone on an open top bus tour for 2 hours, and that would have been wonderful, but there was no time. I would have enjoyed going on a boat tour to see the tiny islands, but again there was no time. However, we greatly enjoyed our wandering. We were amazed at how tiny it was, and how quickly we could walk across it. We were frustrated, though, when we tried to find one particular spot, the river gate. We asked the locals and were directed in three right turns, so ended up back in sight of where we had started! We set off and asked again and finally found it, just a few steps away from where we had been. Kotor is full of narrow alleys and winding lanes, and the instruction to ‘Turn right’ only takes you twenty steps before another instruction is needed.

Almost wherever you go in Kotor, the mountains loom over you. You catch frequent glimpses between the houses. It is amazing to see just how narrow are the strips of land on which all the towns and villages are built.

The queue for the tenders was quite long, but at least we were not on the last one.

Back on board the ship, we rushed through our lunch and then headed out on deck to take photos as the ship sailed out. Kotor is at the end of what looks like a fjord, but technically is not one as it was formed by a river, not by ice. It takes about 90 minutes to sail out to sea. (Some members of our group had got up early enough to film our arrival, but I had looked out the window at 6am and seen heavy fog so had stayed in bed for another hour!)

Being the last day, we had to organise ourselves and pack for going home. Of course we had a last afternoon tea and snaffled some cookies to eat the next day.

The cases had to be left outside our door before going to bed (any time before 2am - mine was out at 10:30). I had some trouble with the luggage label, as I did not feel the instructions on it were very clear. In the end I disregarded their instructions as I could see the label could fall off if I did it their way.