Our Europe Trip: Part 2 | Sea Day 1 + Kotor, Montenegro

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Apr 26

Sea Day

We slept in on our first sea day and went to breakfast at the buffet. Then we were passing through the Straight of Messina, which is the small piece of water between the toe of Italy and Sicily, so we went up to the deck to watch and take pictures. After that we went to the Family Feud gameshow and Merengue dancing lessons. Then we went up to the deck, decided it was warm enough for our likings, went back down to our room and put our bathing suits on and laid out while a Hall and Oates concert played on the big screen. The ship has one section dedicated solely to playing movies and concerts.

That night was formal night so we got all gussied up, had some pictures taken and enjoyed steak and shrimp for dinner 😋 we went to the love and marriage game...during which we ended up on stage as the “newlywed” couple despite celebrating our third anniversary this year...🤔 we were by far the youngest in the room so didn’t really have an option. We didn’t win but we did have fun and got a free gift and bottle of champagne. And we ended the night in the piano bar again, which is how most nights ended.

Kotor, Montenegro

Our plan in Kotor was to hike up to the church that overlooks the town. It’s about halfway up to the fort that stands toward the top of the mountain. We also wanted to explore the cool fortified town by wandering the streets and walking the walls. Well, in wandering around, we made it up onto the walls. We were walking along and all of a sudden they ended. To our left there was a path that looked like other people had taken it and the group of people in front of us was doing it so we figured...sure, why not? So we started up and up...and up some more. The views were spectacular and we were fairly certain we were going to end up at the fort at the top but not entirely sure. The paths we were on were a bit sketchy at times. Thorns on one side, a sheer drop off on the other, walking on loose rocks and old, wobbly steps. It was an adventure, especially in a dress and sanuk loafers (not made for hiking) but that’s about how our life goes. We eventually made it to the fort at the top and celebrated by petting a kitty and taking a picture lol. I told Ryan before we took this it would be captioned “life’s a climb but the view is great”.

We then started the trek down the “right” way which was not nearly as fun or as beautiful. It was a whole bunch of steps or loose rock for you to climb down. My knees were screaming and we decided we had unintentionally made a good decision not going up the “correct” side. The mountain side was more of a cardiovascular workout and less of a muscular workout whereas the stairs would have been both. Once we got to the bottom we found out if we had gone to the stairs side from the beginning we would have had to pay €8 per person to climb up. To which we probably would have said “HA, no thank you” so it turned out to be best all around for us to have adventured on our own.

From there we wandered through the streets which apparently are intentionally designed like a maze though we managed to never get lost. We saw a lot of cats, went into a lot of stores, bought some earrings that were made in their typical way of decorating ceramic pottery, and headed back to the ship.

Sailing away from Kotor was amazing. We stayed up on the Lido deck to watch. The sun was setting as we sailed out of the southern-most fjords in Europe.