Making it to Montenegro - November 1, 2017

Neither Gym or his lovely wife knew what to expect in Montenegro or Croatia, the next two ports of call. We were pleasantly surprised in both these countries. The weird thing was that just 25 years ago, Croatia was at war with Montenegro and it was a nasty little spat. In 1992, these two mostly christian countries were at each others throats, shelling and bombing each other's cities and doing lots of crumby things to each other's citizens. Gym saw no evidence of the war in either country and found the citizens equally charming and welcoming. However, just to be on the safe side, Gym let Mrs. Gym lead the way in both these countries, just in case there were any lingering landmines.

If we had flown in to Montenegro, it wouldn't have been the same. If you have never been to this country before, the best way to arrive in Montenegro is to sail into the Bay of Kotor. This picturesque bay is 28 kilometres long and is very much like a fjord but is technically a sunken river-valley. Like fjords though, the Bay of Kotor is framed by steep mountains on both sides that merge with the water at a steep angle. Beautiful little whitewashed villages and towns cling to these steep shorelines. Each settlement has at least two tall churches painted white, like the other buildings and all the buildings have red roofs. Due to the steep sides of the valley, a town or village may only have 2 or 3 streets paralleling the shore. As we slowly cruised in, we passed small fishing boats trolling between these settlements, alongside the ship.

Then abruptly at the end of the bay, we docked beside the medieval, walled city of Kotor. Kotor is the icing on the cake, of the Bay of Kotor.  Like Corfu, it owes much of its architectural style to the Venetians. It is very cool. Most of Kotor was built between the 15th and 17th centuries when the Venetians were in charge and it was built to keep the Ottoman turks out. The turks were always an issue for the people of Kotor and especially in 1538 and 1637 during which the city was besieged. Both of those major sieges were repelled by the Venetian-backed defenders.

After getting off the ship, we would not initially explore Kotor, as we picked a tour that had us take a little spin around Montenegro, before coming back to Kotor later in the day. We were led by a guide named Bogdan, a very animated young man who told us we could call him "Bob". I would place Bob at around 25 years of age so he had not experienced the war. The first part of Bob's tour was a little hairy. Don't do this tour if you have a problem with motion sickness or heights. Immediately after getting off the ship and onto the bus, we climbed the P1 - Kotor to Cetinje "highway". It is an infamous two-way road, with only one lane. It abruptly climbs up the Orjen mountain range behind Kotor, to a height of about 1000 meters above sea level. There are 30 hairpin turns that we wheeled around before stopping to finally get out and see the view. So, one might ask, what about oncoming traffic? Yes, there was some! As we climbed up, zig-zagging around the hairpins, we came head on with several cars that were going down. They had to stop and back up around the previous hairpin to let us pass. It was quite the thing to witness. Mrs. Gym was ready to jump but we hung onto her and made it safely to the top. The view was spectacular.

In Cetinje, we toured the Royal Palace of King Nikola. Nikola lived in the palace for more than 50 years. It was the seat of the Montenegrin Royal Family from 1867 to 1916. Although it is no castle, it is a massive structure which is now a museum that has several impressive reception rooms and bedrooms enough for the royal couple and their 12 children. Not only was Nikola a productive father, it was said that he was the father-in-law of Europe because 5 of his daughters were married to princes or kings of other European countries. Nicola was also famous for routing the Ottomans in a war from 1876-78. In one room of the palace several captured turk battle flags are on display.

Fortunately, we didn't have to return to Kotor on the P-1. Instead, we descended back to sea level on the highway to Budva. Budva is a modern seaside city that is the anchor of the so-called Budva Riviera, the centre of Montenegro's touristy area. We didn't stop here. The bus continued on a long loop back to Kotor which ended with us traveling back into the valley of the Bay of Kotor, via a long tunnel that terminated on the outskirts of the walled city. There we accompanied Bob on foot and he led us on a walking tour of that tidy little fortified city, tucked underneath the Orjen mountains. It is a place Gym wants to go back to someday to explore at his leisure.

We reboarded the ship and left the Bay of Kotor in the dark. Kotor and the defensive walls that were built in a semi-circle up the mountain, are all lit up at night. It is a breathtaking sight.

looking back towards the Adriaticfrom the Bay of Kotor

a beauty of a village clinging to the shore

looking down on the Bay of Kotor from the top of the P-1

Oceania gets the best parking spot

survivor of the P-1

the viewpoint where we were served a Montenegrin wine 

Nikola's Royal Palace

Bob

quaint narrow streets of Kotor

Venetian architecture

an orthodox church

another church built way up the mountain to save Kotor from the plague

cool stone streets

a Roman Catholic Church

Kotor at night, as we pulled away

Convening in Corfu

Corfu would be our third and last stop in Greece. Corfu is an island in the northwestern most part of the country. If you like to study history, Corfu is the place to hang out. You have everything from ancient Greek naval battles to multiple Ottoman sieges.  Because Corfu was successful in repulsing all of the Ottoman sieges, funding poured in from the rest of Europe to further strengthen and develop the fortifications. And today, tourists can enjoy exploring those cool castles. Gym and Mrs. Gym would only scratch the surface in a single day.

We had booked a short tour but were going to cover lot of ground. The first thing we did after we disembarked at the dock in Corfu was to pass through the city and travel about 10 kilometres up the hill, to the Achilleion Palace. There were two notable former owners of this impressive property and both were important royals in Europe at the turn of the 19th Century. Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria, built the palace beginning in 1888 and spent time there until she was assassinated in 1898. She was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I who ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire for 68 years.  The second owner was Kaiser Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, who bought it from Elisabeth's family in 1907. The famous Kaiser can be said to have helped bring on WWI. Both owners left their mark on the property and much original artwork and personal belongings from both owners can be viewed there today. Gym and Mrs Gym were most impressed with the statues of Achilles in the gardens and the ornate wooden furniture that was designed for Elisabeth.

the gardens of Achilleion

This is one of several pieces of artwork where Achillies is the subject.
It is a true masterpiece showing the agonizing death of our hero who has
beed hit in the ankle by a poison arrow.

The palace which served as a casino for a while before it was a museum, also served as
a set for the James Bond movie, "For Your Eyes Only".

A life size statue of Elisabeth of Bavaria
who is said to have been over 6 feet tall.
Amazingly she maintained a 20-inch
waist even after having a son.

Mrs. Gym found the current owner of the palace
who was very friendly, arching her back and kneading the  cement.

The second statue of Achilles was donated by the Kaiser
and this one is not life size. It is 10 meters tall overlooking the sea.

This is part of the cool stuff the Kaiser left behind.
The model ship is the Kaiser's yacht  that he used to get to Corfu.
It had a very large crew and apparently to be a member of the
crew you had to be able to play a musical instrument

Elisabeth left the most amazing set of bedroom furniture.
Each piece featured  hand-carved wooden decoration including
the face of Medusa to ward off evil. 

After checking out the palace, we drove down to sea level and back towards the city. Before climbing back up into the city the road came to a stop light where it passed the end of the runway for the Corfu International Airport. Apparently, if a plane is taking off or landing while you are about to cross the end of the runway you get a red light so you don't get landing gear messing up your wax job.

Looking back on the cruise ship from above the airport

It was warm and sunny when we came to the last part of the guide's itinerary, a walking tour of the medieval city centre. The centre of the old city of Corfu is where you see some really cool narrow streets paved with well-worn, marble paving stones. The streets are lined with Venitian-style three and four story houses hewed out of native stone and adorned with balconies and tile roofs. There are many churches in town but the coolest one is the Church of St. Spiridon. It has the tallest bell tower in the Ionian Islands and contains the remains of St. Spiridon himself. It is a very beautiful church on the inside but is rather unassuming on the outside except for the bell tower. Gym and Mrs. Gym did not get enough time to fully explore this historic part of the city and were not able to check out the fortresses that protect it. We will have to come back.

bridge from the old town to the Venetian citadel which
stands guard over Corfu.

Mon Repos Mansion of Sir Frederick Adam, 

Lord High Commissioner

Church of St. Spiridon Bell Tower

narrow marble paved streets and angular medieval buildings

greek musicians in one of the city squares

That evening we sailed out of Corfu city and to the north and passed through  the narrows which separate Corfu from Albania. Our next stop would be Montenegro. The waters were calm and Mrs. Gym was enjoying the calm seas.

Keying in on Katakolo

Katacolo, is the closest port in Greece to the ancient Olympia. This is the place where the Olympics began and the place where the flame for each modern day Olympic competition is lit before being carried to the various host countries, to display at the games. Gym and Mrs. Gym would board a bus with our excellent guide Panagiota, to tour ancient Olympia, on the morning of October 30th. First, we toured the remains of an ancient Gymnasium and also walked through the sites of the ruins of the temples of Zeus and Hera that stand outside of the ancient Olympic Stadium. We passed under the the same archway that the ancient competitors passed, on their way to compete in the stadium and stood on the marble starting line which is still there. That marble has persevered through the ages. For Mrs. Gym, standing on the starting line meant something special as she has competed in 8 marathons. For Gym, he wondered if maybe he should have used marble on the patio, instead of exposed aggregate. 

Olympia would just be the early highlight. Later on, we would join dozens of our shipmates for a traditional Greek lunch and a bit of Greek culture. There was a nice light lunch waiting for us in one of the local hotels and if you wanted, lots of local wine and just enough ouzo to get our more enthusiastic shipmates to consider joining the professional greek dancers, for a spin around the floor.  We watched as the dancers twirled around and kicked high in the air, slapping their hands with their feet and contorting their spines, in the process. Having completed a twirl, kick and slap, the dancers would yell, "Opa", at the top of their lungs. Gym believes that Opa means that a dancer has kicked so high and so hard that he has actually cracked his own back.  It is for this reason that Chiropractors find it difficult to land a practise in Greece... after the lunch we re-boarded the buses for one last stop.

Our final stop of the day, was at a very cool local vineyard where we were shown around by the Patriarch of a fourth-generation wine maker.  And you guessed it, at the end there was a wine tasting so that my shipmates and I could keep our buzz going all afternoon. However, before tasting the wine we got at tour from the owner, who showed us around a museum of old farm equipment that he had on display in one of the barns, the beautiful vineyards and the whole wine making facility. This wine was much better than the stuff that we had had at lunch and I highly recommend you give the product a try as it is exported all over the world. Mercouri Estate is a fourth generation winery currently operated by brothers Christos and Vassilis Kanellakopoulos. Check out there website at www.mercouri.gr and look for their wines that are apparently available in many countries, including Canada.

The Marina would leave the Greek mainland for the second time and set a course for Corfu. 

Panagiota

this is where the flame is lit for each Olympics

the archway to the athletes tunnel that comes out on the "playing field"
of the ancient Olympic Stadium

looking down on the playing field from up on the side of the bowl
above the athletes entrance

Mrs. Gym posing on the marble starting line with the athlete's
tunnel in the background

this is not a headstone it is a tribute to a
former olympian from the ancient games

apparently this creek used to be a river that was navigable by
tiger ships that would bring bring people to the Olympics from all over antiquity

Opa!

there is something so wrong here, you would think the
Greek bus drivers parked these after a party

Mr. Kanellakopoulos of Mercouri Estates, a real character

older farm equipment that has been preserved by the estate

The Mercouri Estate Mansion that needs some renovations but is still magnificent

Starting in Santorini

If there is one place Gym would not want to start amassing a legacy of real estate assets, it would be in Santorini. Did you know that many of the coolest hotels and bars there are perched 300 meters up above the sea, on the edge of a sheer cliff, on the remnants of a large volcanic caldera? Does it not scare these locals, that as recently as 2012, there have been tremors and noxious odours emitted from the shifting of molten lava to nearby subsurface chambers, that have resulted in an increase in the height of the island of up to 12 centimetres in some areas? Furthermore, those cafes with the beautiful views of the Mediterranean are built over top of a layer of volcanic ash and pumice under which are buried the remains of a town that was destroyed by the Minoan Eruption of about 1620 B.C. So, there is evidence that previous eruptions destroyed someone else's fortunes.... Sure, Santorini looks nice and it is probably a great place to quickly have a glass of wine and some table olives. However, Gym's recommendation is to buy your condos and vacation properties elsewhere.

We cruised into Santorini on October 29th and dropped anchor underneath Fira, the capital of Santorini. As we had anchored we would have to ride tenders into port. Mrs. Gym had had a bad night but "manned up" and jumped onto the bumpy little tender that took us to the docks. From there, Mrs. Gym had to grin and bear a bus ride that would see us wind back and forth along the hairpin curves of the road that rose 300 meters to the top of the cliff. With great determination, Mrs. Gym kept her cookies down.

We were on our way to Akrotiri. This is the site of the Bronze Age, Minoan archaeological site that was the highlight of our stop on the island. Akrotiri is a very impressive attraction and it was enjoyable to visit because we had a fantastic guide (see below). Basically, after decades of digging through the tens of meters of volcanic ash three-storey buildings laid out complete with streets and squares and serviced by indoor plumbing are slowly being unearthed. And since 2012, you can enter the site under a roof that protects it from the elements and walk around the outside on a raised boardwalk. You can also descend into one part of the town and walk the streets and through a couple of the buildings.

After our archeological trip we re-boared the buses to wind our way back up the island to Fira where we got a walking tour of the capital before descending back down to sea level in cable cars that took us back to where the tenders were docked, for our return to the Marina. Mrs. Gym kept her cookies down all day.

looking up at Fira, Santorini from the anchorage

stratigraphic evidence of multiple eruptions over time

Alexandra, our Greek guide

the beautifully well protected archeological sight at Akrotiri

looking up at the cafes and hotel clinging to the cliffs

ancient beds of Akrotiri

This is interesting because it is a work in progress.. Whenever
they find holes like these it means that possibly some wooden object
rotted and left a hole in the volcanic ash. They then fill it with cenent and then they
clean the ash from around it. What appears is a piece of furniture or a tool.

A community building with three doors

a Bronze Age storeroom

looking at the remnants of the volcano in the centre of the caldera
 from Fira

Fira from the edge of the cliff

the cable car would be situated just to the left of the bell tower