Wanderung 19

Meandering the Mediterranean

Cruising the Eastern Mediterranean

April - May 2009

Thursday, April 30th: 2009, Corfu, Greece

Bob:

While we were having breakfast in the Windjammer buffet area, we had a great view of the Peleponesian Islands passing by on our starboard and larboard sides (right and left sides to you landlubbers!). The channel was often surprisingly narrow, but that also gave us great views of the mountainous islands on either side. The islands were green and forested and in some ways reminded me of cruising in the panhandle of Alaska from Vancouver, Canada, to Juneau, Alaska. The difference was that the Peleponesian Islands seemed to be dryer and didn't have the forests of tall, dark evergreens that we had seen up in Alaska, and they were also much more populated.

Our ship was not scheduled to dock in Corfu until 12:30 p.m., so after breakfast we spent the morning taking turns working on the computer. Monika worked at processing our pictures and I worked on updating the journal. We had an early lunch to get ready for our planned afternoon of walking in Corfu, but took our time to let the first rush of passengers work their way through the debarkation procedures before we ventured out.

We had been given a poor quality map by Royal Caribbean; it had no indication of North, South, East, or West, no street names and no scale of miles or distances, so it was basically useless. Unfortunately, Garmin corporation did not apparently believe that Corfu was part of "Europe", as my Nuvi 270 GPS also did not have any street information for the island. But fortunately the local businesses had produced a tourist map that was available at the exit center, and that proved to be a real life saver for our walk through the town.

Once out of the port gates we turned left and followed the seaside until we arrived at an old fort that on our map was called the "New Fort" as it had been built by the Venetians in the 1700s (that's "new"?). Along the way we passed three different shops that rented small motor scooters, and a customer of one informed me that the charge was 15 Euro per day. I would have liked to rent one and drive around the island of Corfu, but since this was our first visit I discarded that idea in favor of walking around the Old Town area on the tip of the peninsula that borders the harbor.

The city map helped us find our way into the Old Town area, but it was devilishly hard to find street signs at many if not most intersections. The ones we did find were mounted about 10 feet up on the corner wall of one of the buildings at the intersection. The other problem was that the signs were using, of all things, the Greek alphabet! Go figure! That seems like such an minor change, but in fact that simple difference made it far more difficult to read and understand. When I found a street sign, I usually had to spend 2-3 minutes standing there and puzzling out the letters and then mentally assembling them in my head to finally get the name of the street. Fortunately, the tourist map provided by the city had both the Greek alphabet version and the normal Western alphabet names for the major streets.

We walked through Old Town to the park on the other side where the shuttle busses chartered by Royal Caribbean dropped off and picked up passengers. That gave us a backup alternative if we became too tired to walk back to the ship. This was also where the "Old Fort" was located, which presumably antedated the "New Fort" by a few centuries! While wandering about we bought a cheap beer for Monika (.48 Euro) and an expensive bottle of 7-Up for me (.75 Euro) at a small grocery store sandwiched into two street-level rooms about the size of a normal living room in the U.S. We each sipped our beverage of choice as we continued to meander the streets of the Old Town section, which appeared to be the main "tourist" shopping area on Corfu.

It was pleasant not to have people verbally and physically assault us as we walked along the street as they had in the bazaar in Turkey. I chatted later with some British ladies who also mentioned that they had not purchased anything in Turkey because of the high pressure sales tactics, whereas in Greece they could look closely at the merchandise unmolested by the vendors and were much more likely to actually buy something. We felt the same way; window shopping was a pleasure in Santorini and Corfu but very uncomfortable to the point of being impossible for us in Turkey.


 

We wandered out of the Old Town area into the newer commercial district looking for either a Post Office to mail off our cards or an Internet cafe to check our email. I saw several yellow postal boxes but never a real Post Office. But down a side street I spied a green sign with "NET" on it, and sure enough that turned out to be a bar + internet cafe. Despite being a bar, it wasn't very smoky at all, and the prices were only 1 Euro for each 20 minutes. That was cheap enough that we took the time to attach all the pictures of our stops in Ephesus and Santorini that Monika had prepared and mailed them off with text messages I had composed. We also learned that Phyllis and Lois had arrived home safely, and that was a load off my mind, so all in all it was well worth the 2.60 Euro it cost us.

Besides, sitting at a computer terminal gave us a rest before starting off on our walk back to the ship. We arrived back in time for dinner, always important, and attended the evening production show, which featured numbers based on ballroom dances. The two lead dancers, Daniel and Chelsea, were both very athletic and extraordinarily skilled, so their pas de deux was a thing of beauty.

On our way back to our cabin the ship's shops had a sale of genuine, made in China, $10 watches. Since my travel watch was non-functional until I could replace the battery, I picked out a small quartz watch with large, easy to read numbers and a leather (?) strap that I hoped I could wear while going through metal detectors without setting them off. That was a sensible, practical purchase, but after that I ran off the rails a bit. At the end of the table, sitting in a big box alone and unloved by any of the other shoppers in the throng (mostly female), I found a waterproof (30 meters) diving watch that I just couldn't resist: it had a big plastic case and had a humongous blue plastic strap that made it so ugly it was almost cute! With a lithium battery and 5 solar cells I hoped I wouldn't have to ever change the battery, and I found that pushing the "light" button made the minute numerals turn bright blue and the second numerals turn bright green! Whoa!

Well, that was just so cool that I broke down and bought it, which was certainly impulsive and probably impractical. After all, it's way too big for my wrist although I might be able to wear it on my ankle. Maybe it will float? I was disappointed, though, that the watch didn't come with any instructions, but I guess you just don't get the watch AND the instructions for $10 any more. Fortunately the "Blue Bomber", as I nicknamed it, had 4 buttons that seemed to have functions similar to other 4-button digital sports watches I have had in the past, so I managed to set the time correctly. After fiddling around some more to make sure that the alarm was truly "off", it was "lights out" for us. We had heard about ballroom dancing on the pool deck under the stars at 11:00 p.m. that night. That sounded terribly romantic, but we just couldn't manage to stay up that late and fell asleep shortly after ten.

Copyright 2009 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Transatlantic Cruise Map of Northern Italian Bus Trip Map of Eastern Mediterranean Cruise

April 2009
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5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30
May 2009
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3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24/31 25 26 27 28 29 30

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