104. The Pillar of Shame

“I HATE this thing! It’s made for women to talk to each other!”

Today, Grandpa experienced rage while trying to check his email on the iPad. He could not be comforted in any way. We don’t have much time for messing around on the internet, but what precious time we do have is spent downloading pictures and, for me, writing this blog!

I woke up today with the Athena cruising down the Adriatic Sea. After breakfast everyone gathered on deck to see the view through Kotor Bay. Kotor is another small town right on the coast of the Adriatic. Soon the Athena pulled up right across from a huge ocean liner.

Every night before dinner, Ivan or Rok have a port talk. Last night we learned that the people of Kotor, or Montenegro in general, are stereotyped as being lazy. This might be true, but we were anything but lazy while we were there. On our tour we learned all about the palaces lining the streets. They just looked like houses to me, but apparently everyone in Kotor was noble for some reason.

In the first square of the town was a “pillar of shame.” Unfortunately it is not used anymore, but in better days, criminals would be tied there for a day or so to endure some public humiliation before being thrown in a cell.

After some shopping and lunch, Scarlet and I met up with a smaller portion of the group to climb up the mountain to the fortress connected to the town wall, a journey that lasted over 2 hours. We made many stops for pictures along the way, and with the sun beating down on us finally reached the top!

 You can almost see the top in this picture 

We went up on a path with steps leading up to the top. For the way down, we went on the other side of the mountain. To get to this trail we had to punch a hole in the wall and crawl down some rocks to the path. If you don’t already know, this cruise is full of elderly people. Half of our boat is made up of a group called SIRS or Sons in Retirement. So you can imagine the fun we had with this extreme sport. All who were up to the challenge were rewarded with bragging rights.

Of course there were other little rewards along the way. One being the mountain goats we passed. A cool thing about this place is that there are no rules or regulations. Or at least a lot less than back home. In America I imagine staff members would be standing at every corner of the fortress and these goats being kept in a fence where we could admire them from afar and maybe get a good picture if our camera had a good zoom. Here, we can just climb wherever and the goats are just free to do whatever and they were super friendly! Bob lost some flowers he had in his back pocket, and he wasn't the only one the goats tried to pickpocket.

To celebrate our success, we went to a smoothie place back in town. I think America should have more smoothie places. We were greeted like royalty when we stepped back onto the boat. There were a total of 6 people who made it to the top and back.

The view from halfway down

As always, we were served a huge dinner that I couldn't finish, and had the rest of the night to ourselves. I  met up with Rok and Ivan to check out the nightlife of the city, and had a blast! It started off with a chocolate lava volcano cake or something like that. I’ve had a desert like this back home, but it really didn’t compare. We hopped around to a couple more places and finally found our way home at a completely reasonable hour.