Kotor, Montenegro

Friday 23 August 2024. The approach to the port is up the most southerly fjord in Europe and we were already moored by the time we got out on deck. The scenery is outstanding though.

From where we are moored we can see Kotor's magnificent medieval walls climbing up the mountainside, but not the town itself. The ship's tenders are pressed into service to take us into the city and we collect our tickets after breakfast and wait for our group number to be called. There's still a bit of waiting on the staircases to be done but I manage both that and the transfer to the bobbing up and down of the tender boat without mishap.

The city itself is jam packed with people and is more of an ordeal that a pleasure. We walked through as best we could, coming out at the southern gate for a breather and to catch any available shade in the heat of the day. There was precious little. Most benches were out in the glare of the sun and I sat having swivelled my cap to protect the back of my neck from burning as best as I could, looking for all the world like a little old man desperately trying to appear hip. Or whatever the term is these days... Other old men were passing, hunched over their beer bellies and drawling "Hey man! How's it dribblin'?" ... "Far too frequently..." seemed to be the correct response.

Kotor is a medieval city with walls surrounding it, leading high up into the mountains above on each side of the city before meeting at a point making an almost impregnable barrier to any invader from land. We made our way back through the crowds - far more people than previous visits - I checked and they were in mid-October... Coming out near the pier where the tender boats were waiting I decided a drink wouldn't wait and we found seats in a small courtyard and ordered a Coca-Cola and a Sprite. I do miss the days when I could order a glass or two of wine, but long drinks took the edge off our thirst.

We made our way back to the ship and Deck 12 to our customary table and the sketchpad came out again. We couldn't see the city, but the very edge of the city walls can be seen on the right-hand edge of the drawing. This is probably my favourite sketch of the week. The mix of scrub and vegetation against the bare rocks of the cliff face gave me a challenge and the red roofs and line of boats give added interest at the bottom. I had a few more onlookers from behind apparently - unless they speak I don't see them, but Miss Franny told me after that there had been a steady stream of people.

That night as we got into one of the lifts someone suddenly said "Are you the gentleman that does those beautiful paintings from the side of the ship?" and I had to pause just in case there was someone else who did better ones...

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A Wander Around Kotor

Thursday 19 October 2017. It's our final port of call for the Adriatic Explorer cruise before Thomson Dream returns to Corfu where we will have to leave her until another cruise. By which time she will be "Marella Dream" as the Thomson cruise brand is being renamed.

We awake during the final stage of our approach to Kotor, another ancient city with lots of medieval architecture. Today we are once again in a different country - this being Montenegro. Kotor is approached through a 28 kilometre channel, often described as a fjord, but which is actually a ria - a submerged river canyon. Just to make it even more confusing, it is known as Kotor Bay... A more zig-zagging, narrower bay would be hard to find, but it does widen out into a respectably large expanse of water just at the edge of Kotor city and the ships can dock so close that you can literally walk off the ship and cross the road to the city walls.

Whether you are one side of the walls looking out to the bay, or the other side looking into the city, Kotor is intensely beautiful. The bay itself is surrounded by high mountains and they rear up behind the city whose walls zig-zag wildly high above the rooftops, clinging to the steep mountainside.

The city walls and much of the architecture of the city are Venetian, dating from Kotor being part of the Venetian Republic from 1420 to 1797. The city fell under siege by the Ottomans twice during this time, in 1538 and 1657.

We entered the city through this gate near the far end of the bay. The weights would have facilitated the raising of a doorway - either drawbridge or a portcullis-type gateway.

The mountains see the sun before the city streets, which have to wait until it climbs a little higher before its rays can cast their glow.

This is somewhere around 10:00 - 10:15 in the morning. We didn't think we were rushing through breakfast but we appear to have been amongst the first to reach these streets at least. We had walked to the end of the bay before entering the city whereas most of our fellow passengers had entered through a nearer gate and were still exploring a different part of the city. Shops include craft shops, the usual tourist souvenirs - we bought a couple of pottery mugs with relief images of Kotor and other Montenegrin cities - and jewellery shops.

The sunshine starts to penetrate into the city, brightening and warming the place, though I did like the atmosphere of the shadows and street lamps.

The Cathedral of Saint Tryphon is one of two Roman Catholic cathedrals in Montenegro. It dates from 1196 and itself is built on the site of a former church dating from 809 CE. St Tryphon was from Phrygia (in modern Turkey) and was a farm worker noted as a healer, mainly of animals. He was martyred by beheading during the Decian Persecution around the year 250 CE. His head was (is?) kept within the cathedral.

This is a side door to the cathedral, but richly carved. The cathedral suffered much damage during an earthquake in 1979 requiring major restoration.

The Square of Arms. For many the first sight of the city after passing through one of the main entrances from outside the city wall.

Despite the small size of the city, the city walls stretch for 4.5km (3 miles) as they climb high up the mountainside. We will leave during daylight this time, but in 2010 we were here after dark and the sight of the floodlit walls stretching up the mountain were spectacular.

We pass through the walls back to the waterfront of the bay and sit for a drink in a cafe. My Coca Cola comes complete with a special plastic envelope around the bottle!

From outside the wall we can see just how imposing it is close-up. The tower wall is sloped to deflect cannon balls.

As we sail away, we take a look at the walls again. They make it that much harder for an enemy to drop in...

And that's it for this cruise. We sail back to Corfu and the following day go from a nice warm 23 degrees back to Manchester which is about 11 degrees! Brrr - I need another cruise!

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Split in the Cruise Itinerary

Tuesday 17 October 2017. We sail into the port of Split in Croatia. I won't be covering it at all, but for the next couple of days we are in or near some of the main locations for the TV show Game of Thrones. No dragons will be harmed during the course of our visit...

Again we are just walking into the town which is only a short distance from the port. It takes about 15 minutes of walking to get to the town and you are walking through a very public port with plenty of people around from crew members looking for their favourite wi-fi hotspot, to ferry passengers heading to one or other of the many Croatian islands. The motorized sailing boat, Sagena takes upto 18 passengers in eight cabins and was built in 1991, being renovated in 2006/7.

We reach the town but are still outside the city walls as yet. The town is based on a Roman palace and the fortress-cum-barracks that protected it. It was built for the Roman Emperor Diocletian in 305 AD (or CE as seems to be taking over - CE=Common Era, BCE=Before Common Era. The years are held to be the same as BC and AD but it is now becoming widely accepted that Jesus Christ was born in 3 or 4 BC). Split took over as the Roman capital of the Dalmatian region after the ancient capital - Salona - was overrun by the Avars and Slavs. By 650 CE it was filled with Roman refugees and under Emperor Justinian the Great became part of the Byzantine Empire.

We make our way round to one of the gates - as a Roman military design the walled city was oblong and had four gates in the centre of each wall.

Once through the gate and having descended down a few steps to Roman ground level, we are walking on the original Roman paving with Diocletian's Palace on our left. The low octagonal tower and colonade on the left is part of the palace. At this time the old Temple to Jupiter was converted to Christianity and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The remains of Saint Domnius, patron saint of the town (then called Spálathos) were brought here. The bell tower in the background was built in 1100.

The Peristyle of Diocletian's Palace; an open square leading to Diocletian's own entrance to his palace. "Who are all these people???" he would say, waving selfie sticks away.

The centre of Split within the fortress walls is pretty much traffic free. Streets are narrow and, as the morning wore on, fairly crowded.

One of the main squares in Split. The Roman aqueduct that brought water from the Jadro Spring nine kilometres away still fulfils its role today. There are a few different influences in Split. Once a seat of the Western Roman Empire, the Goths took over in the 6th century, but the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire also governed for a while and the city passed through the hands of Slavs, Croats, Venice, Hungary, Austria, Italy (at the time when Italy itself fell under Napoleon's armies) and Yugoslavia. Croatia gained its independence in 1991/2.

The fish market. We knew we were approaching it well before we saw it! It lies just outside the city walls on the far side from where we entered. The number of seagulls sitting on its roof, waiting for an opportunity was quite impressive!

The modern street on the edge of the opposite side of the walled portion of the city to the gate we entered by. The building on the right with it's mirror-like windows almost disappears into the sky!

There are plenty of street cafes and bars. A string across one street had a row of boots and shoes dangling from it. Close by was a shoe shop. When we turned round the lingerie shop down the street had done something similar...

Outside the walls on the inland side of the fortress we find a wider street, but the behaviour of pedestrians and the cycle taxi driver seem to suggest that traffic is not a problem.

We head back into the city, doing almost a figure of eight round the four quarters of the street pattern.

At one point we come to a large square with verandas to the sides. This is the Prokurative, dating to the brief rule of the French Empire as a tribute to the porticos of St Marks Square in Venice.

We came out of the city again by way of the gate we had entered. This brought us to a vegetable market and then a general market with just enough fridge magnets to sustain Fran's interest! Walking back to the port, Marjan Hill had been a place for recreation and culture since the days of Diocletian. We walked through the port, finding Tomas sitting outside a cafe taking a chance to talk to family back home.

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A Morning in the Museum of London

Sunday 24 November 2013. We left the hotel after breakfast and hopped onto a London bus heading for St Paul's. We had decided to have a look at one of London's many museums, but one I had never visited before.

The Museum of London is behind St Paul's Cathedral (assuming wrongly that the side facing the Thames is the front!) and is approached over a walkway from the first floor level of a building on St Martin's Le Grand St on the corner of London Wall.

There's not a great deal of London's original city wall left, but here's a good view of it from within the museum itself.

The museum has a huge collection of items from prehistoric to modern times. The auroch's skull from a huge bison-like animal is awesome and there's a large collection of stone clubs, hammers and knives, before the days of metal. Which itself is well represented by a staggering collection of long pointy prodding things and a display of skulls with holes to prove how well they worked...

The photo is from a slightly later collection of clothes in a display recreating the old Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens which existed in the early 19th century on the southern side of the Thames near Vauxhall Bridge.

This is a pair of virginals - yes, a strange term given that there's only one, but that's how they were described. This was a 17th century stringed instrument played on a keyboard. A bit like a harpsichord in that the strings are plucked, not hit by hammers, but they are plucked near the centre of the string not at one end like a harpsichord. This makes for a smoother less harsh sound. They were immensely popular and Samuel Pepys noted how many of them were to be seen in boats during the Great Fire of 1666. They were not heavy and were expensive, so a good thing to save from a doomed house! This one was made in 1656 by James White. It, like many other exhibits, is displayed in subdued lighting, but the camera has dealt with the low lighting resulting in being able to see it clearly here.

This looks like the granddaddy of all grandfather clocks and I've positioned a passing waif to give some idea of scale. [THUMP!] Ahem... I mean I asked the scrumptious Miss Franny to pose next to it...

There's a street of shop fronts with window and sometimes internal displays of the goods they sold. The toy store had a set of picture cubes. Described as a Victorian toy, these simple forerunners of jigsaws for very young children lasted until the 1960s. I remember having one myself and, unless my memory is playing tricks, the pictures look very familiar too... Each side of every cube had a part of a different picture, so you could make six different pictures altogether.

This was gorgeous. A bronze art deco lift from Selfridges store on Oxford Street. It dates from 1928 and apparently the uniformed girls who operated them were as great a novelty as the lifts themselves! I fell into a conversation with one of the museum's staff about it.

So much so that I had to catch up with Miss Franny who was ready for a sit down in the museum cafe. This was a fun place to be also due to a large video wall that showed different scenes of London with greatly speeded up video. Cars and buses zoomed about and crowds of people weaved in and out of each other at bewildering but hypnotic speeds. I came out of there without a thirst but with a crick in my neck! Brilliant!