Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Today is Monday 2nd and we are taking a day trip to Kotor in Montenegro. Up before breakfast to meet our driver at 7:00am and we are on our way on another beautiful day in a very comfortable Audi A5.
Kotor is yet another medieval fortified town that was first settled by the Romans in 200BC. The Greeks came in 1100 and stayed for a while, followed by the Bulgarians, Serbs and then Venetians in the 15th century and the must have liked it because they stayed for 400 years. The Habsburgs took over for a short time until Napoleon came to town. So Kotor has had quite a mix of influences that are reflected in its architecture. The old city is the classic maze of narrow winding streets that suddenly burst into a small square in front of a church. Fortunately the main access way though all of this is paved in a different coloured stone, so it made navigating much easier. However, it appears that our principle reason for coming here is to take a photo of the fiord like inlet from the top of the Fortress, located 260m above the town and accessed along a 1.5km "path" with 1300 stone steps of various quality. After 1 hr of this, we arrived at the top and I thought the least that I could do was take a video, if only to prove we made it. For those of you who have seen it on fb, the reason it is so shaky and quick is that while I was taking it, I was attacked by a swarm of bees and stung on my head and arm. At least it distracted any pain that I might have felt in my legs after having climbed the stairs to get here. Just how they built the defensive walls from the sea to the top and then hauled up the cannons etc to defend it is beyond belief.
It is enough to say that this was one of Jean's finest and definitely my last!
We also stopped a couple of other small towns during the day, thankfully all at sea level, and arrived back at the hotel after 11 hrs. All in all a great day that we rounded off with a pizza an a cold beer in a waterfront cafe. Lijepa!!!
- comments