Corfu to Dubrovnik

Corfu to Dubrovnik

On Wednesday we docked in the Italian industrial city of Brindisi. As this city has little to offer we joined a group of people on a bus tour of Alberobello and Ostuni. Our group included an old couple (meaning really old-older than me) who got on the wrong bus thinking they were on a shuttle bus into town.

Both of these towns are in Puglia, a flat agricultural area that is relatively poor (but makes decent wine). Alberobello is famous for its Tulli houses which date from medieval times. These houses are made of stones and are cone-shaped. The town looks like a science-fiction version of an American movie about cowboys and Indians. Ostuni is a walled city that dates from the 12th century and all the buildings are white. This was the only day so far when it rained but we managed anyway.

On Thursday we dropped anchor in the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. To access Kotor we sailed for about 90 minutes up what is called Europe’s most southerly fjord. Although technically not a fjord because the river between the cliffs was not formed by glaciers, the effect is the same. This area is spectacularly beautiful, which is why it is visited by so many cruise ships. Just as well as Montenegro doesn’t seem to have much is the way of economic development and depends almost entirely on tourism. The city of Kotor is walled and quite lovely. We spent most of the day walking, with a stop to try the local wine.

We are still drinking lots of wine on the ship as the waiters continue to refill every partially empty glass. Each day there is one red and one white and the choice changes each day. This free wine is quite good with the exception of the night we were in Brindisi when the Chianti Classico was overly acidic. Last night was something called “white night” when everyone was supposed to dress in white clothes. I brought my 10-year old white pants with me but found that sitting down was a task of great difficulty. I didn’t get up on the dance floor for fear of a bursting and the exposure of my undershorts (also white).

Today we arrived in the stunning beautiful city of Dubrovnik. The walled city was bombed for 40 days by the Serbs in 1991, but has been almost completely rebuilt. One can tell which buildings were damaged by seeing whether or not the roof tiles are bright red (new tiles). The ancient walls are all intact and the standard tourist thing is to walk the top of the walls all the way around the city, which takes about an hour, and includes lots of stairs. Today was a nice sunny day and was 17 degrees. Even so we were quite exhausted after the climb. Wouldn’t want to do this in the 40-45 degree heat that they get here in the summer. The city was crowded with the usual tourists from the country which requires its citizens to take 300 pictures of each other each day. Since this is post tourist season I can’t imagine what it would be like in mid season. After our exercise we sat for a long time in a wine bar on the main drag and just people watched.