Cruising the Adriatic (Mediterranean) Sea

We stayed another night in Trieste, Italy and then boarded a ship (Costa Classica) for a seven day cruise in the Adriatic Sea.  This body of water is part of the Mediterranean Sea, and runs down the east side of Italy to Greece, which is just below and to the right of Albania on this map.

The ship had 1,500 passengers, and a crew of 500.  Each day, the ship stopped at a new port, providing us with an opportunity to leave the ship and tour the towns.

Our room was quite roomy for a ship.  Most of the cabins on this ship had large portholes.

The first port was Ancona.  This is another old Italian city, that is on the east coast of Italy, and south of Venice. The second port was Dubrovnik in Croatia.  The most significant thing about Dubrovnik (shown below) was that it was a totally walled city.  

We were able to walk the wall all the way around the city.  This was our favorite port. The wall was very high in some places.

We enjoyed a snack in Dubrovnik.

The third port was Corfu in Greece, and the fourth port was Argostoli, which was also in Greece.

We rented motor scooters and toured this part of Greece.

The country-side has many fig and juniper trees – also we saw many olive trees.

The houses overlooking the inlet.

The fifth port was Kotor in Montenegro.  It had another totally walled-in city, and you could see the walls high up the mountains behind Kotor.

We were able to hike a long ways up the mountain, and look back at our ship.

The sixth port was Split in Croatia.  This was another old city, and was hidden inside the current modern city of Split.  This was our second favorite port.

Brenda was able to visit with the Roman soldiers.

We were surprised when we found the old Christian ‘chi-rho’ symbol in two places in Split.  This (and the Roman Soldiers) suggested to us that the city and old church dated back to the Roman Empire, probably between 200 and 400 A.D. We saw the symbol first on the entry way to an old baptismal font.

Secondly, in a display in a very old church. Brenda saw this first. Can you see it?