Montenegro/Albania: Day 4

/ alliwanders

Kotor

My 2 week tour with G Adventures starts in Kotor and ends in Tirana. Should give me a good introduction to the area!

Today was a “lite” tour day – at 9am two speedboats picked up our group of 17 and zipped us up the bay to Perast, about a 20 minute trip. Once there we were set free for 2 hours to explore. I joined half the group to take a little ferry over to the Lady of the Rocks which is a church on an islet just offshore. Ideally we’d go into the church but it was overrun with cruise ship tour groups so I just perambulated until I found a shady place to sit. 

Perast
Other island which is closed to visitors
Lady of the Rocks island – bad timing as overrun with other tourists

Back in Perast we had an hour left to sightsee; again perambulating the waterfront was all I needed to do.

Can’t see the forest for the trees
There’s a little charm
That’s better

By 11am the sun was pretty intense so we were happy to climb back aboard our speedboats for the cold breeze as we were whisked all the way down to the Old Town.  Overwhelmed by the heat and crowds from the 3 cruise ships in town, all of us who had already spent a few days here opted to return to our hotel. 

I found a lovely terrace to have a special Sunday lunch, then chilled by the pool. By midafternoon this side of the fjord was already partially in the shade so I meandered up the coast to Stoliv, a few miles along. 

Tiny little individual marinas all along the coast, one sign said built in 1857(?)
Most jetties had their owners sunbathing & swimming, enjoying the lazy afternoon
Not much room for pedestrians, i.e. me!
Threatening clouds but came to naught
Some well kept houses, some renovated into holiday apartments and many abandoned – definitely an area in flux

It was a nice walk, good to wear off some lunchtime calories! There was nothing official planned for this evening so it was, in all, a very relaxing day.