Highlights of The Mediterranean, 18-25 May 2013 Index Page

A series of articles covering our holiday with David and Miss Jeannie (Creeping Bentgrass on tour!) on the Thomson Dream cruise ship. We'll be calling at Palma, Majorca > Day at Sea > Ajaccio, Corsica > Civitavecchia, Italy > Livorno, Italy > Puccini's house at Torre del Lago, Italy > Pisa, Italy > Villefranche, France > Barcelona, Spain. At some point we'll be treated to a storm with storm force eleven winds and a somewhat rough sea with decks closed and lots of people turning green.

I usually take something like 300 photographs during a week's cruise. David came back with 2000... I have therefore had to be ruthless when it came to selecting photos for these articles unless I was willing to write - and you, dear readers, were willing to read for as long as it took us to live through the cruise!

Each of the photographs below will take you to the related article and photographs.

Return to Cruise Holidays Index

Adriatic Explorer Cruise Index, 13-20 October 2017

Join us for the Adriatic Explorer cruise on the Thomson Dream cruise ship from Corfu heading up the Adriatic Sea to Koper, Slovenia; Venice, Italy; Split and Dubrovnik in Croatia and a final stop in Kotor, Montenegro before heading back to Corfu where we leave at the end of a brilliant week.

We will not be taking any excursions this time, but we will leave the ship each day under our own steam for a look at each of the cities we stop at. Click each of the small pictures below to view the articles that describe our adventures and the features and history of the places we visit.

Return to Cruise Holidays Index

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!

Adriatic Explorer Cruise Index Page

Lazy Day in the Port of Dubrovnik

We've spent a few days racing (leisurely) through various places and today we're going for a slow walk and a relaxing time!

Today we are at the Port of Dubrovnik. Gruz to give it its proper name. Never ones for lazing on sunbeds and burning to a crisp, but wanting a more gently paced day than the previous two, we decide to take the sketchbook for a walk to the bottom of the harbour and see whether the view is - or can be made - simple enough to draw.

It's a respectable walk by the time we reach the far end of the harbour and here the road carries straight on and a path leads to the right along the harbour wall and off up a dirty great hill which would eventually bring you to the coast with a turn to the left and still a long walk to the walled city of Dubrovnik. But given that there's a massive map and a very clear signpost pointing along the road that says "Centrum" (not that hard to translate into "Centre" I would have thought...) it turns out to be a bit amazing how many people look at the sign and then the map and then walk past us along the harbour wall and then return saying the hill is massive and they weren't sure if they were going the right way. If you want to walk to Dubrovnik, by the time you have reached the map you are roughly one third of the way to the walled city.

Some take half an hour to come back and then look at the map again and then come back past us to retrace their climb... Now that's dedication! As for me, I'm quite happy sitting here with an empty mind (yes I know - that's its usual state...) and happily doodling away. A boat owner comes along and drags a tiny dingy out to paddle out to his motor boat that is moored in the harbour somewhere. He takes a look at what I'm doing. "Very nice!" he says and we fall into a conversation. He is going fishing for the day as he does most days, bringing home the family meal.

The Croatians are lovely, friendly people I have always found. Several stop to look at what I am doing and make comments in perfect English which makes me stop to count how many words I can speak in Croat. I don't finish all the fingers on just one hand...

We spent a couple of hours sitting there whilst I ignored most of the ships and boats but included Thomson Dream and the Karaka a wooden broad-hulled sailing ship which we have admired on previous visits. Just beyond the Dream the River Ombla enters the Adriatic via a ria, a 5 kilometre (3.1 miles) long estuary which flows under a suspension bridge whose support cables can be seen over the Thomson Dream.

We walked back towards the ship, looking in one or two shops, including a shop dedicated to Game of Thrones. Dubrovnik is the location for the show's King's Landing.

Gruz is a pleasant place to visit even without the more well-known attraction of Dubrovnik. Buses run from just outside the cruise terminal entrance into the city, stopping just outside the main entrance, Pile Gate.

Tomorrow will be our final day and port before we leave the ship for home on Friday. Join us next time in the city of Kotor, in Montenegro.

Adriatic Explorer Cruise Index Page

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.

Adriatic Explorer Cruise Index Page