Adler Adriatic trip

We had to be out of our room by 8am so we were up early to catch breakfast, finish packing and leave the ship. We took a taxi to the Acropolis View Hotel which is just a little distance from the Acropolis. We dropped off our luggage as we can't check in until 2pm. The hotel clerk was very helpful and managed to get us a walking tour of Athens and the Acropolis just an hour later. She said the meeting point was about 10 minutes away but it was about a mile, a brisk 20 minute walk - I was soaked by the time we got there. We were fortunate that there were only 6 people in the group, 2 Australians, 2 Italians (they asked if she could do the talk in ancient Greek!) and us. We went across the street to the parliament building and the tomb of the unknown soldier to watch the changing of the guard.  The changing of the guard is an amazingly choreographed process as the two new soldiers relieve the current soldiers. They have metal cleats and heels on their boots that make noise as they...

This is the first morning we have been able to relax as all other mornings we had to be up and out of the ship by 7-8am. We had originally planned to take the 9 hour excursion to Mount Olympus but it is a more than a 3 hour drive each  way. We decided to take the afternoon excursion to the temple of Poseidon instead. This morning we had a relaxing breakfast and spent time in the Explorer's Lounge, watching the ships in the port, writing postcards and getting caught up on reading. After lunch we got on the bus of Sounion. It was nice to have Scott and Jean on the same tour. There was about a 1.5 hour bus ride to get there, going along the western coast with many scenic bays. Our tour guide said that Greece has over 8,000 miles of coastline even though it is a small country. The countryside is very dry with a few green shrubs that can survive the dry hot weather but they may not stay green much longer. A temple to Poseidon, the god of the sea was built here in the 5th century...

Our excursion this morning starts at 7am so we are up bright and early. Today we are anchored in the harbor as there aren't docks large enough to host cruise ships and we need to use "tenders" to go to shore. Santorini is actually a collections of 5 islands which are the remains of a huge volcanic caldera that collapsed thousands of years ago. For centuries, Santorini was controlled by the Venetian empire and subsequently by the Ottomans. Santorini had been mainly supported by olives, grapes and fishing but with the boom in tourism the income is now 80% from tourism. It is a bit sad as one sees many abandoned terraced vineyards. We were fortunate to see the sun rising over the Santorini caldera while we were eating breakfast - it was quite a spectacular site. We could see the tour buses making their way down to the dock where we will be landing - it looked like a series of caterpillars moving down a tree! The process of getting onto the tender and to the shore was s...

We had an early breakfast sitting outside overlooking the shore with layers of misty mountains in the distance - very pretty. The ship docked in the small town of Katakolon which has a population of only 500 but hosts the arrival of 250 cruise ships a year so it is very busy with restaurants and shops. It is about 40 minutes from the Olympia Archaeological site. There are two other huge cruise ships here, one docked and one anchored in the harbor. Our tour guide was quite interesting. He was born in Olympia and grew up playing with his friends around the ruins. This made him interested in archaeology and he subsequently received B.S. and M.S. degrees in archaeology. He worked for the Greek government as an archaeologist until the Greek financial crisis when he lost his job. He then became a tour guide which was actually more lucrative.  He only does private tours and tours for Viking. One thing very different about Greece is the relationship between the church (Greek Orthodox...

Corfu is the second largest of the Ionian islands off the shore of Greece. In the morning we took a bus across to the west side of the island and boarded a small (10 person) boat to see the famous grottoes and caves along the shore. The most famous is the "Blue Grotto" where it looks like a bright blue light is shining from the bottom of the sea into the grotto - see photo below. After getting back to Corfu, we had a short walking tour of the old city between the old and new forts. At the Greek Orthodox St. Spirodon Cathedral we were able to see St. Spiridon in his casket which many pilgrims come to visit from as far away as Russia. We weren't quite sure what the protocol was as some people bent into the casket to kiss his shoes and then kissed the glass over his head. We just tried to be respectful. He was buried in Constantinople for 400 years and when Constantinople fell to the Turks 400 years later, his body was removed and taken to Corfu for re-burial. His body w...

Sailing into Kotor is like sailing into a fjord, with very steep mountains on both sides of the ship although technically speaking, this isn't a fjord. The town of Kotor is at the very end. The name Montenegro means "black mountains" as this was the appearance of the cypress trees when the Venetians came. Montenegro uses the Euro for currency although it is not a member of the Eurozone - they decided to use the Euro in order to stabilize their economy which had suffered from very high inflation. At one point there was currency with 15 zeroes! Kotor is a medieval city that for centuries was part of the Venetian Republic, located on an important trading route to the Levant. In the Venetian time a tall wall was built around the entire city to protect it from attackers, several times the Ottomans. The first part of our excursion was up a road that has 25 switchbacks in order to get to the top. Much of the road is a single lane although traffic is in both directions. It ...