Halloween at Sea

When I booked the trip I thought it was convenient that it fell over Halloween, since I knew that was a mostly "wasted" school day.   But for my 4th grader, he was very disappointed to hear he wouldn't be at school for the party or get to trick-or-treat with his buddies.  Luckily I insisted that he get a costume and pack it for the cruise.  There were not a ton of kids on board, but the kids club organized a Halloween Trick-or-Treat scavenger hunt throughout the ship and there were a lot of cool decorations.   William got a bag of candy and toys and so many yummy desserts from the buffet!  It was a fun night!

Kotor

 Our port day in Kotor was cancelled due to the continued rough weather that we encountered leaving Venice and in Dubrovnik.   Kotor is a tender port so the seas were too choppy for us to be transported in the tender boats between the cruise ship and the port.   I personally didn't mind another day to relax at sea but was talking to a couple onboard who had sailed there before and they said it was a great medieval city.  So many we'll have to go back someday!  As it turned out, we did dock somewhere in Kotor or Montenegro - I wasn't ever sure where exactly we were - but passengers were not allowed to disembark.  They did have to let off some of the crew for a planned rotation as well as do documents.  I'm told the real reason was because our cruise originated in the EU and had to be out of the EU (in Croatia and Montenegro) for a certain number of hours before re-entering the EU in Greece in order to qualify for certain tax exemptions.  Someone likened it to how an Alaskan cruise leaving Seattle has to stop in British Columbia Canada in order to do the same thing.  Seems reasonable to me.   John and I went out on the deck to enjoy some of our first sunshine in days!   The scenery really was beautiful! 

Back on board, it was formal evening so we got cleaned up for pictures and dinner.   William apparently hasn't worn a belt before and isn't an expert in tucking in his shirt.  Luckily he had both figured out by the end of the week since we made him wear those slacks and a polo or button down several more times.  

Dinner was at the Teppanyaki restaurant on board.  Six months ago I would have told you that William wouldn't eat any of that food and it would be a waste to take him.  But after he was introduced to it by the McCorkle girls on my birthday trip, it's one of his favorite things!  He loves the "show" and he's a big fan of steak and rice.

On our side the grill was a couple with their adult son.  He was probably older than me and John but he was sharing a room with his parents and drinking very heavily - and presumably had been the entire week (his entire life??).  We made my dad sit by that guy, and he was a very good spirit about it.  The whole evening was quite a raucous and delicious time.

Dubrovnik

Over the summer I learned that Dubrovnik was where the Kings Landing scenes for Game of Thrones is filmed, so I tried watching the show to get in the right frame of mind.   Turns out that while GoT is a show I really like, it is not a show I want to have on the TV (our only TV being in our family room) when the kiddo is awake.  And since there aren't many evenings that I'm home and awake and he is not, I only made it through two seasons before we left.  (Most of that was during the 10 days he was visiting grandparents in Kansas in August!)  Nevertheless, I found Dubrovnik to be a great stop:  a beautiful walled city with an interesting history and scary but cool waves in the bad weather.   We did a guided tour that started with a bus trip up to the scenic overlook cliffs.  My dad spotted cat villages alongside the road ("cat condos", perhaps?) and asked the guide about it.    Apparently the guide wasn't proud of them and said he'd never heard of it.   My dad researched it later and it's totally a known thing. ;-)

Next stop was the walled city in the rain.  We all slipped and slid along the wet cobblestones, and I for one was thankful to not have planned to walk on top the walls.   The guide told us a lot of fascinating stories about Dubrovnik always being the pawn in someone's game to take over more land.   He didn't say it that way, of course, but over the course of its history it has been occupied almost nonstop by someone.   This time of year (and with the daylight savings time switch the day prior) it was dark around 4:45 most days on our trip.    That made for some really cool pictures in Dubrovnik before we headed back to the boat around 5:30.
 

 

Venice - Day 2

On our second day, we had a tour booked for Doge's Palace before heading to the cruise terminal.  Since the weather wasn't looking good for after Doge's, Dad skipped the tour so he and Mom could do their gondola ride while John, William and I headed out.   In what turned out to be great foreshadowing of the day to come, William pointed out the restaurant where we had dinner the night before - and specifically that the water was significantly higher on the steps than it had been 12 hours earlier....

When we arrived in St. Mark's we reveled at seeing the water bubbling up into the square through what yesterday we had assumed were drains.   We had figured out the water....we thought!  Crowds were higher than I was expecting for a Sunday morning, but the Venice Marathon was being run, so maybe there were crowds related to that.   It was fun watching the runners pass through but as the water got deeper and deeper, it was quite the sight!

Inside Doge's Palace, we did the Secret Itineraries tour.   It was basically the prisons and prisoners tour!  We really enjoyed it but then ran out of time to tour the regular, artsy parts of the palace.   One of the reasons we ran out of time was that the lights went out at the end of the tour and though you could still get around via the sunlight coming into the windows, there was some confusion.   A German family touring with us also showed us the high water level website that their Airbnb host sent them.   The water was rising, but today's high was going to be tomorrow's low.   I didn't realize what that was going to mean THE FLOODS were coming the next day. 

When we left the tour, it was time to get back to the hotel and head to the cruise terminal.  Only we walked out and our exit was flooded.   As in, no way to get across the square without traipsing through a foot of water.   As the only member of the family wearing waterproof booties, I took my cash and headed to the vendor selling the shoe covers we saw yesterday that people were wearing "for fun."  I had heard they were 8 euros from the stalls (whereas off square you could get them for 5 euros).   As I tried to hand the seller 25 euros (for 24 euros worth of boots), she said 30.   Of course they were!   So 30 euros later, we all had new souvenir shoe covers and were on our way across the flooded streets!  There were parts where we had to pick up William because the water would have soaked his jeans due to the splashing above his knees.   It was interesting to see that all the shops had a half wall across their doorway to keep the water out.  But even as we walked back we could see them fighting a mostly losing battle to dry their floors.

When we got back to the hotel, the porters had already loaded our luggage and Mom and Dad onto a water taxi, so we jumped in and head off on a bumpy ride out to the cruise terminal.  We were lucky that we left when we did because many of the taxis and water bus options were halted due to the high waters.   Only emergency vehicles were going to be allowed.  We saw on the news in the days to come that 75% of Venice was underwater Monday.   The raised platforms had to be taken down because they were underwater obstacles.    The 110+ centimeters of water we had caused the warning sirens to sound but paled in comparison to the 156 centimeters (over 5 feet) the next day!  The technical term is Acqua Alta, which means High Water. 

We had big adventures in our 24-ish hours in Venice and now had big adventures ahead of us for our 8 day Adriatic Cruise!