At Sea

It was only a short visit to Kotor, which was sad as this was one of the best places we had been too. I just loved the serenity of the place. Anyway, we set sail in the afternoon and had a day at sea on our way to Athens. We drowned our sorrows with some of the wonderful food and drink as we made our way down the coast of Croatia and Greece.

Kotor

After nearly 2 days in Venice we set sail again heading for Kotor, in Montenegro. We woke to an absolutely beautiful day and the most spectacular scenery as we made our way up the sea inlet like a fiord to Kotor. We arrived  at 11am and were tendered into the shore.There was a beautiful "old town" a bit like Dubrovnik, but not so many tourists. Fortunately for us one cruise ship was leaving as we arrived and another arrived as we were leaving, which meant that this little settlement did not get too over crowded.

Firstly ashore we ventured into the local market in a shed on the shore. Here we tasted the most gorgeous hand made cheese and prosciutto type meat that had been curing for months. To look at it you would think that it was dirty but that is all part of the curing method and it was scrummy. The cheeses were cured in three different things, but I can only remember two of them. One cheese was covered in pine needles and raspberries and another in a type of mushroom. Some had walnuts on them and other nuts....yum. I purchased a chunck to have later with wine and crackers. The tin with the dark coloured cheese is the one with the pineneedles and raspberries

This shows how small the inlet was. That is our ship in the background. Hubby thought the water was a bit chilly for a swim, though a lot of the locals came down for a swim obviously after school

Venice

Today we are en route to Venice and arrived at 1pm, sailing up through the canal to the port where there are two other cruise ships tied up- an amazing site. Unfortunately it was raining very hard by the time we got to the dock and we got soaked just trying to find our way around. We decided to head back to the ship and had a snooze waiting for the weather to settle. Lucky for us the next day was beautiful and we tripped around on the boats in the grand canal.

 We went out to Murano the island of glass making. There is everything you can think of made out of glass. Some of it was beautiful , but some of it was ugly and pretty garish!. I am not sure who would want some of the big coloured chandelaires that we saw. The genuine stuff is very expensive and also it was very hard to tell what is genuine Murano and what is cheap foreign made stuff. The weather was glorious so it was fab to be in a little boat scooting up and down the waterways.

Here are a few pictures of the beautiful brightly painted homes on Burano, the isle of hand made lace. Aren't the colours gorgeous.It was lovely out here, very quiet and sleepy. I suspect a lot of the people who live here go to the main islands or Venice to work. Burano is about 30 minutes boat ride from the main islands of Venice.