Saturday July 10^th. Day-trip to Montenegro. I felt kinship to Montenegro. Montenegro is black mountain, Vermont is green mountain. Sure, their mountains drop into salt water and ours into Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River, but pretty mountains are pretty mountains, and our populations are just about the same. They have less land, 5,000 sq mi compared to our 9,000.  Montenegro has a history of war, due mostly to the fact that they lie on the strategic road from East to West through Constantinople.

We were fortunate to pick starboard-side seats. We watched the Adriatic all the way down to the Croatian check-point on the border. It took about an hour to clear Croatia, less time at the Montenegrin check-point. Then we drove to and around the beautiful Kotor (cutter) Bay. We stopped and visited Kotor city briefly. Kotor has amazing defensive walls that climb steeply the mountain behind the city. After Kotor we headed to the resort of Budva for a bad lunch and a quick peep at a long sandy beach. OK! Back on the bus!

We cut across Kotor Bay on the way back with a short ferry ride. The tour guide helped me get postcards mailed before we exited the country (yea!). If I had failed it would have made my standing in line at the Montenegrin post office in Kotor a waste of time.

We got back to the ship, changed and freshened up, and grabbed a taxi to get to a restaurant that folks had recommended. We finally tried the fish-platter-for-2 we had been seeing on the menus. We finished the meal with the local fruit brandy and headed back to the ship. We caught a glimpse of the fireworks that were part of the opening ceremony of the summer festival in Dubrovnik.