Sunday, May 19: Corfu, Greece

Where Four Of Us Spent Some Hours On A Bus Driving From One Scenic Spot To Another, Desperately Trying to Stay Awake

And The Other Two Saw A Palace (Of Sorts)

We tried a new strategy today to be able to get on the bus as soon as possible: we would get our bus stickers as usual, but then I’d immediately start walking to the bus.

The meeting place to pick up the bus stickers was the comedy club. When we arrived, the line was all the way down the hall. This did not look good. Someone else saw us standing there with our chair-cane things (I should take a photo of it; it’s very popular), and told us we could just barge into the room and get our stickers – that’s what she did for her sister.

So we did.

I started the trek towards the bus – which hadn’t arrived it. It was already warm, and it was a long long. Apparently I could have asked for assistance (euphemism for “wheelchair”, but I was under the impression that was not allowed except for certain circumstances. As I trudged along the pier, an NCL person told me that because the buses were parked so far away, I could have taken advantage of the assistance. It would have been great to know that.

The bus was just arriving as I made to the end of the pier. An NCL person asked to sit to wait for it to park. Which I did. But then they didn’t tell me it had parked.

No matter – the rest of my crew had just shown up and we were the first ones on the bus.

As the bus filled up, an NCL person handed a piece of paper to the tour guide. She looked at it and seemed completely confused. I saw what it was and exclaimed: “That’s for me!” This didn’t seem to help her, but she gave me the piece of paper. It was the reservation for the front seat of the bus that we had arranged for on the first day on the ship that hadn’t worked on the previous two excursions. Third try is the charm?

The tour guide was very nice, but she had a very soothing voice. And it was a little warm. This combo resulted in a struggle to stay awake.

Bottom line: I only remember 3 things out of her entire monologue:

• Corfu is very old
• Corfu was never conquered by the Ottoman Empire
• Corfu was once a part of the Venetian empire. You can tell by the Venetian Lion emblems all over the island.

That’s about it.

Our firist stop was at Bella Vista (“beautiful view”)

Driving back down through Corfu, we saw an old fort. No idea if it had an actual name. The guide always referred to it as Old Fort.

We continued driving up to the top of Corfu. The towns were incredibly tiny. This town has two traffic lights – one at each end of the town. You get to wait 7 1/2 minutes for your turn to drive down the single one-way street.

This is view from this last scenic view point:

Then it was time to go back to the ship.

On our way back, we passed by the Church of Holy Mary Madrakina, an historic church in Corfu. It is an extremely popular location for baptisms. So popular that people make reservations more than a year in advance. Andy was able to get a photo of a celebration at the church.

Once again the warmth and the guide’s soothing voice made it extremely difficult to stay awake. Though sometimes watching the driver manage those incredibly tight turns did get the adrenaline flowing for a bit.

Meanwhile, the guys went on a walking tour of Mons Repos Palace. I got the impression it wasn’t much of a palace. But there was a cat.

We had time to hang out for a bit before dinner. You’ll notice that I never mention the evening entertainment. That’s because we hadn’t gone to one yet. The shows just don’t sound interesting, which is weird for NCL.

Tomorrow: Messina, Sicily, Italy