Our week-long Mediterranean cruise on the Royal Princess had just one sea day in it occurring after our stop in Naples and the visit to see Herculaneum that we did there. The sea day was necessary to get us down the west coast of Italy then up the east en route to Montenegro. The ship anchored in the Bay of Kotor early in the morning and our proximity to the anchor meant we were well and truly awake for that particular event although we missed the sail into the beautiful location. Nevertheless, the view of the mountains and the bay from our balcony was a wonderful one and even though it was early enough that the sun hadn’t risen above the mountains enough to cast the ship in sunlight we could tell it was going to be hot.
We couldn’t see the medieval town of Kotor from our state room and we had an excursion booked that would take us well away from it. We knew we would have time after our excursion to see what the town held in store but after breakfast we gathered with our excursion group, took a tender boat across to land, then immediately headed to a nearby boat that would take us nearly ten kilometres back along the bay for a sightseeing tour of Our Lady of the Rocks then the town of Perast (photos to come in later portfolio posts). The Royal Princess wasn’t the only cruise ship in the Bay of Kotor when we visited, with the considerably smaller Queen Victoria alongside the town ahead of us.
One of the things we noticed was the large number of churches in the hillsides that we passed. I’m not sure what the ratio of churches to people is in Montenegro but it wouldn’t surprise me to discover it among the highest in the world from observation.
The boat ride was lovely and the gentle breeze that came in off the water was very welcome. We could tell every time that we slowed down for one reason or another or as we started to approach our first stop at Our Lady of the Rocks that the temperature was ridiculously hot. From talking to our guide we discovered this wasn’t unusual for the region and that temperatures had got so hot the month before we arrived that entire towns and the government itself had to shut down. The water we’d taken with us for this excursion did not last very long at all.
