The main coastal town of Kotor was just down the road from where we were staying and it has an old city area much beloved by the enormous cruise ships that ply their trade in the area. It is indeed a beautiful old town area. We were lucky, on the day we visited there were none of these leviathans in dock. They are not just small blocks of flats on the water, they can be massive floating cities dwarfing the dockside.

To my mind they cast more than a shadow on places of culture like Kotor. Chatting to one of the shopkeepers, she said that when they do come the streets are almost blocked by parties from the ships. Although they are said to be of great benefit to the local economy, there must come a day when saturation will bring problems.

On our day there the heat was intense. So what to do on a very hot day? Climb to the top of the nearest large hill. We zigzagged up a steepish path. I took us two and a half hours to reach the top. We stopped at a small cafe near the top for a welcome drink from a chap who ran a small cafe there and seemed to have been trying his own “grappa” for much of the day. I sank two bottles of strawberry juice in short order. VB Tony was kind enough to shell out for me and when he went to pay, Mr. Proprietor apparently said to our guides that it was ten Euros. It should have been 9 euros Fifty but he’s kindly “rounded it up”. He had greeted us like long lost friends and when we went came and hugged both VB Tony and myself at the same time, enveloping us in his big hairy arms and a cloud of “grappa breath”. I think I inhaled enough to prevent any driving for a day or two.

From there to the top of the castle was a breeze, and we could see for miles from up there with Kotor spread out below us and the channel running back to Perast.

Here I am in my favourite “John Moose” with Kotor below me,
no floating blocks of flats on our day!