Adventures with Julia

October 9, 2017

Map of Montenegro.  Sveti Stefan is very near Budva, on the Adriatic.  Kotor is just up the road.  We crossed the fiord just north of Tivat and headed for Croatia.

We departed Sveti Stefan at 10am this morning and headed northwest to Dubrovnik with a new driver, Maro from Croatia, and guide, Alma from Montenegro.  They both spoke good English and neither of them smoked.  We were happy campers and got along with them right away.

Alma jumped right in talking about Montenegro.  It is the size of Connecticut, has 650K people, and has everything from the water sports on the Adriatic Sea to high alpine sports in the mountains, which get to 8,200 feet, and every activity in between.  She loves living here year around.  The only thing she does not like are the taxes, which take 20% of her income and sales tax, which take 19% on everything except flour and cooking oil.  She does get free health care and free education through university.

The fiord from Kotor near where it enters the Adriatic Sea.

We could see there is a lot of beauty packed into the tiny country.  It even has a fiord that was an ancient river bed and provides deep water access to ships coming up river from the Adriatic Sea to Kotor, the historic, walled, UNESCO city at the end of the fiord.  We are headed there, but will first make a stop at an olive farm, half an hour from Kotor.

Olive fields and the many stone walls around them.

It is a family owned and operated olive farm called Lustica, for the name of the region.

John Moric showing us the old olive press he used until 6 years ago.

The Moric family is in its second generation of olive farming and John, the middle son, runs the tourist operation, which represents about half of the family income as far as I could tell.

Mark inspecting the modern olive press equipment.

Although they have 1000 olive trees, some of them hundreds of years old, the harvest is not always successful and some years there is barely enough for their own use.  They are gradually increasing the number of producing trees and the number of tourists.  John showed us the modern pressing equipment his family uses to make oil today and then showed us the old-fashioned way they made oil as recently as 6 years ago.

The first generation of Morics enjoying his retirement.

They still have the donkeys, now retired, who used to turn the grinding stone.   The facts of the matter are:  6-8 kilo of olives make 1 liter of oil.  At 10 years of age an olive tree should produce 30 kilo of olives.  So, a good tree could produce 5 liters of oil per harvest.  This farm does only 1 press of the olives to insure the best virgin oil, with the lowest acidity, no more than .8% maximum.

John had us taste the oil after letting it warm in a small cup in our hands.  He said it should have a peppery taste if it is very fresh.

One of the Moric family olive orchards.

I have never tasted olive oil straight before and was very surprised at how peppery it was.  So much so, that I coughed a lot before my throat settled down.  He insisted we have a “snack” in his old press room, so we obliged, even though we were not hungry.  We met his father and I saw his mother through the kitchen doorway.  Seems like a nice family trying to make a successful business together, however, none of the three boys, all men in their 30’s, is married yet.  They better get courting if they want a third generation.

The high walls stand out as we enter Kotor.

Then we drove on to Kotor to see the walled city.  Alma was fully informed and showed us all the important buildings inside the Old Town, including St Triphon’s Cathedral, one of the oldest Catholic Cathedrals, 1166, but severely damaged by earthquake in 1979; and the oldest building in the Old town to have survived all damage through the centuries, St Luke’s Church, built in 1195.

The main square and clock tower in Kotor.

St Triphon Catholic Cathedral, 1166

Apparently the 1979 quake collapsed much on the Old Town again and reconstruction is still going on.

In the 9^th century, the Byzantines began building defensive walls high up the mountain behind the town and the Serbian Empire continued the walls in the 12^th and 13^th centuries.

Inside St Triphon Catholic Cathedral.  The gothic altar is from 1364.

The Venetians arrived in 1420 and Kotor became the 3^rd most important trading port along the Adriatic.  The big commodity was salt.  At that time only 800 people lived inside the city walls and all of them were from wealthy families who could afford to build large stone houses.

This gold plate decoration behind the altar is a masterpiece of gold work in the 1400’s.

A narrow street inside the old town.

The whole town was very impressive with fine buildings, charming crooked streets, several piazzas, churches, cafes and shops.  Totally a crowded tourist Disneyland while we were there.  Alma told us the town is lived in by locals, who leave during the summer and rent their homes to tourists.  I would too. Three cruise ships were in port and packed the place.

St Luke’s Church, 1195. It has survived all earthquakes and is the oldest building in Kotor.

Having never heard of St Triphon, Alma explained that he was a 3^rd century Turk who refused to renounce his religion and was beheaded by the Romans.  Somehow, his body was on a ship full of relics that departed Istanbul in the 9^th century.  The ship came into Kotor to avoid a storm and a wealthy nobleman bought the body to put into a cathedral he was building.  Every church had to have relics, so Kotor got St Triphon.

The altar paintings inside the little church.

There are 1500 steps to climb to reach the top of the defensive walls surrounding the old town of Kotor.  We had thought to climb them, but when we saw the condition of the rocks along the path – smooth, uneven and slippery – we chose to walk up the hill about a hundred steps, have a view from there and walk back.  It would have taken more than an hour to go up and even longer to come down and the payoff did not look worth the effort.

Looking down on Kotor from about 200 feet above town. Can see 2 ships in the Kotor harbor.

The 15-minute car ferry crossing to get across the fiord to continue north west to Croatia

We said good bye to Alma and left with Moro for Dubrovnik.  The weather was lovely all day and we enjoyed the scenic drive around the fiord, the ferry ride across the fiord that saved an hour of drive time and connected us more closely to Croatia, the speedy border crossing into Croatia and the short drive into Dubrovnik.  We were at our hotel, the Excelsior, by 5 with time to wander through this old town and have dinner at a seafood restaurant called Posat.  Great fish and good view of the fortifications, but the place was a bit too pretentious for our taste.

Entering Croatia. The locals call it Hrvatska.

We have experienced one fortified city after another on this adventure and have noticed that the walls and the old towns become larger and stouter with each passing town.  Dubrovnik, however, is in a class of its own.  The walls are huge, thick and very imposing.  There is a draw bridge and a complete city within the walls.  The place is crawling with tourists.

We went to bed having had a very nice 24^th anniversary day.