“So, the thing is…” one crazy day in Montenegro

So at this stage of the trip, we’ve established a great relationship with Stefan, our sommelier. He sends us a WhatsApp ping every day to see where we are dining. Sometimes we bring a bottle to share with him and sometimes he brings a bottle to share with us. It’s a solid friendship.

So when he, a Serbian, asks what our plans are in Montenegro and we say we don’t have any- he lights up. “Aha!,” he says, “I have a great place for you. I will text it to you and tell you what to eat.” 

Perfect. Let’s roll.

We get the text for the restaurant along with what to order. We do a quick Google Maps search and see it- just an easy stroll from where we will get dropped off outside the port. We told the crew in case they wanted to go, too.

That morning, we did the slow roll off the ship since we basically only had lunch plans in town. Also- it was raining some so no big rush. 

Once off, we quickly found the restaurant and then did a few big laps around town to check things out. We found a local grocery and you know I love a local grocery. We cruised inside to check it out and I bought a few interesting chips. This day was really coming together well already. Man I love chips from other countries! I got some tzatziki flavored wavy chips. I got these weird crunchy balls with …I mean listen, all kinds of flavors listed. Also, they weren’t called crunchy balls, which would be weird. Instead they were called Hrusty. Which is obviously so normal. Surely not a word in any language. We tried to buy some chocolates but couldn’t find any that were actually Montenegrin. 

From there, we headed back to the restaurant.  We’d also told our Floor 10 For the Win friends, Sean and Louise, about the place so we were hoping they would stop in at least for a beer.

We walk in and find the old guy running the place. We sit and he brings us menus. Jason looked up what Stefan said to order and we found it on the menu. Bam! We ordered a tall bottle of still water (no gas!), a bottle of local wine (a Chardonnay arrived!), and all 3 things Stefan recommended food wise. Our waiter seemed very pleased.

The wine was delicious- I had just been reading about the winery, which was one of the largest in the country. Not usually our jam but hey, I like delicious wine and this was it.

Then the food starting rolling out. I really didn’t know what to expect. There is no Montenegrin food scene anywhere I’ve ever been! 

The first thing that came was a salat- and man did we devour those fresh veggies. Shredded cabbage, tomatoes, and cucumbers with a light EVOO and salt and pepper. 

Then we had this interesting looking…hot dog thing. I don’t know. It was terrrific. 

And then there was this kebab plate with a big side dish of beans. Holy smokes. SO stinking good. My good friend was once married to a Persian guy and learned to make some amazing dishes including a kebab that she formed by hand and cooked. This reminded me somewhat of that. So great. Even the fresh fries were good but I wasn’t trying to fill up on those.

We ate and ate and took pics to show Stefan later. We never saw any ship buddies so we decided to head back towards the port entrance. We saw an open air cafe there and thought we’d sit and enjoy some more drinks before it was time to board and watch for friends. We met a waiter who had been living in California and loved it but had to move back home when his parents died. Nice young man. Sad story. I hope he’ll make it back some day. Also, was super surprised to see this place there-

We got back on the ship and had some down time before heading to a specialty restaurant that Mike had gotten us all a reservation for. It’s a cool collab between an artist we like, Britto, and a chef. Place was called Love by Britto and it was lovely:)

We weren’t too hungry after the lunch feast, but thankfully the portions weren’t too big and we could just try bites of things. They also had a better wine list up there. There was a wine “made” by John Legend (who knew he bought a winery) and honestly, it was a solid red blend. A hat tip to whomever the actual wine maker is!

So, we go down to find Stefan and tell him about our awesome visit the place he recommended. He was so excited and we said - check it out we took pictures! He grabbed the phone and looked for a minute and then said, ‘So, the thing is, you went to the wrong place.” 

HAHAHAHHAHA.

Because of course we did. Also, how are there 2 restaurants in the same VERY small town in Montenegro with the same name and honestly, the same menu. Like - HOW CAN THIS BE? Also- ARE YOU SERIOUS?

Stefan said the place we went to was fancy. Which is hilarious because I would not have described it as such. The place he intended sounded more like a walk up counter. 

We will forever wonder if the place we went to was better or not. #sigh At least we will share this giggle with Stefan.

Related- the food is amazing. Should you ever have the chance to visit - GO EAT. 

We should have gone to bed early because of all the reasons but instead we stayed up late chatting with Sean and Louise and I was absolutely killing it at 80s trivia. Too bad the old brain doesn’t fire up like that all the time.

We crawled into bed anticipating Corfu the next day - our last day to visit any part of Greece. One last chance for the delicious food! Good thing we’re getting a whole lot of steps in!!!

The Point Was Never the Heineken

 I woke up Sunday morning and walked over to the curtains and peeked out to see if it was real. Was I really in Santorini? Lo and behold I was.

The view from the ship looked very familiar as the last time I was here I sat and stared at the island all day, unable to walk off the boat. So I know this view very well.

But today will be my day. We got ready, had some room service, breakfast and coffee and then headed down to get our water shuttle tickets. It’s kind of a bummer. Sometimes either based on size of ship or the dock itself you’re unable to pull right up and walk off so you have to use water tenders, which are just smaller boats that come and get you and take you over to shore. It works fine but it’s a bummer because it takes a long time to move 4000 people through small boats. We grabbed a cappuccino and sat down in the Piazza until it was our turn to go.

The water shuttle took us right over and dropped us off and I there I was with my feet on the ground in Santorini! Then we had to wait in a decently long line to get the cable car to take us up to the top of the hill. The other options for getting up there were we could have walked something like 600 steps up a very, very steep hillside or we could’ve ridden a donkey. Now I love donkeys, but I did not want to ride one up a steep Hill.

The cable car was slightly nerve-racking for me as someone who has a fear of falling, but it was so much better than that funicular we were on somewhere in South America that I thought you know, this isn’t bad. There was a Canadian gentleman sitting next to me who was not enjoying it at all, and was quite convinced by the end of it that he had crapped his pants. We had a good laugh over that. And for the record, he did not crap his pants.

Once we were at the top, we meandered around, looking for just the right place to stop and finally have that Heineken together overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. We found what looked to be a good spot, negotiated a table right at the front overlooking the sea, and tried to order Heineken only to find out they did not have any. That was no worry because we could go to another place when we were done eating. So we ordered up some delicious food and some local white wine and enjoyed an incredible snack together.

Then we walked on, popped in and out of some shops, took a lot of photos and looked for the next place to sit and try to have our drink. We found the place that looked like it would be the one and went in and grabbed the table.

Now, if you are new to us or this blog and you do not remember the importance of the Heineken, you can go back and find those blogs  but let me just say Jason was here on a cruise right after he graduated college and that’s what he did. He hiked up to the top, found a beautiful spot, drank a beer, which happened to be a Heineken, and thought it was the most beautiful place he’d ever been and he promised to take me here. Four years ago we were here and I got quarantined because of Covid and wasn’t able to leave the ship. So now here we are again determined to have the Heineken.

We looked at the menu and yes, they had Heineken. Hilariously the only one they had was zero alcohol. But the point wasn’t really the Heineken… in fact neither of us even really like Heineken so we thought who cares if it’s zero alcohol so we ordered that and a bottle of white wine because,  you know. So we’re sitting there waiting to finally have this moment, and the waiter walks up and hands me…. A Stella! Apparently they were out of Heineken.

 

It took me a few minutes to decide how I felt about that. I mean come on we finally get here. We’re gonna have this lovely moment where we get to have this shared drink that we’ve talked about for so long and then they bring me the wrong drink? But as we were chatting about it, we realized you know what it was never about the Heineken. It was always about the promise of coming to this beautiful place together and here we are!

What a spectacular delight.

We meandered around for a bit after that on our way to the cable car, which didn’t look all that crowded so we decided we better hop on and at least get to the bottom of the hill. Once down there, we weren’t quite ready to get in a water tender to go back to the ship so there was a little café conveniently waiting for us and we just sat there for probably another hour or so enjoying being on this little island that we dreamed about for so long. And- would you believe that right there in that last stop- in the most nondescript cafe - there was a Heineken?

Valentin!

 Way back in February of 2023, the Malbec crew was bopping around down in the Caribbean celebrating special anniversaries and birthdays. Ah, the night of the 5 cakes…

Anyway, we might this absolutely delightful young man named Valentin, who was a waiter in the Italian speciality restaurant called Sabatini’s. We, of course, won him over with our laugher, goofiness, and charm and we’d all yell and cheer for him when we saw him. We took a very cute picture with him before we all parted ways.

About a week ago, we were sitting in the dining room and Jason suddenly said, “Is that Valentin?” I followed his pointed finger to see and YES, IT WAS!

We called him over. I pulled up the picture to show him. He seemed so thrilled and said, “thank you for remembering me!”

Well, now we’re hanging out daily in the dining room and we were determined that we would recreate the photo- so we did last night. So much fun. He said he couldn’t wait to share it with his mom. He’s still a very sweet and kind young man with some big dreams to one day open his own little restaurant in his town in Romania. I bet he will!

Athens by HoHo

 We have been enjoying not having planned excursions because that means we can get off the ship whatever we want to and we don’t have any hustle and bustle and waiting with a big group for our number to be called. 

So by the time we got up and going after our big night of staying out late. We walked out about 1030 and were shocked to find that we were still able to jump on the same bus that Rich and Ginny were on. The guy selling the tickets showed us. The route asked us what time we wanted to be back and we said probably around three and so he told us what station to be at at 2:30 in order to get back at three. Perfect. We hopped on and were on our way.

The bus first went through the Seaport town of Piraeus, which was absolutely adorable. Clearly, some money in this town they were all kinds of yachts open air cafés shops. It was so cute and we were delighted to once again have some sunshine. We noted to ourselves that that might be a great place to come back for lunch after we toured the city.

From there we were off to Athens, which probably took less than 10 minutes. We decided we would just stay on the bus for one huge lap and get a chance to see everything. And I have to say this still remains my favorite thing when you see something you’ve only seen in Books or TV with your own eyes so there we were cruising along and all of a sudden Jason points up the hill and I look and there’s the acropolis for crying out loud. Amazing. We enjoyed riding the bus around seeing the sites. It’s a little crazy that it’s this massive booming cosmopolitan city on one hand and also look over to your left and suddenly there’s some ancient building or gorgeous old architecture… Truly fascinating to see.

We got back around to the stop where we knew we needed to catch the bus back to Piraeus and that’s when we realized there had been slight communication error. We got there about one and asked when the next bus would be rolling up which we assumed would be any minute and they told us 230 and we said well that can’t be right. One comes every half an hour, but apparently not at this stop. It will be there at 2:30. Well shoot that pretty much destroyed our chances of going back to Piraeus to indulge in one of the beautiful open air cafés at the marina. So we made the best of it and we strolled right back down the street found a cute little café, sat down and ordered some grilled halloumi and a pitcher of local white wine to share. Ginny got what she thought was a piece of baklava but a huge plate of baklava came out instead so we all got a few bites of that too, and it was so delicious.

We got back to the bus pick up area about 10 minutes early to make sure we could get on the bus and we’re told that princess was going to send a separate bus just to pick us up so they were asking us please not to get on the first one that was coming. That be for people who were not cruisers to take. I have to say, we’ve traveled all around the world and sometimes we face things like this and it turns out not to be true, so we were a little bit skeptical. But before long we looked up and there was a bus coming that had a big banner running across the front that said Princess cruisers only. Lo and behold - a miracle. Bus took us straight back to the cruise ship- no chance for Piraeus! Noting that when we come back, we’d skip Athens and just go to this charming town. 

Since it was day one for all the new people, we knew the piazza would be nuts since people tend to congregate there while waiting for their rooms. I went up to the sanctuary sun deck to write and enjoy the last of the evening sunshine. It was a bit chilly so I wrapped some blankets around me. Pretty much had the whole place to myself!

Jason came up and we had our new favorite drink- a vodka soda with a splash of limoncello! We realized we hadn’t had much food so we cruised down to dinner. Our main man Stefan rolled up to help us open our wine and have a few sips. We have him hooked on Nicora! 

And the most exciting thing about this day is that it’s the eve of my chance to finally get to Santorini. Will I make it?!?!?!?!