Corfu - Tuesday 24 September

We arrived in Corfu this morning. Corfu is in the Ionian group of islands, and is one of Greece's northern-most. It is also one of the biggest and greenest of the Greek islands. It has been ruled by the Romans, Venetians, French, English and Germans. It is only about 5km across a channel to Albania.

We had set the alarm for 6 am for our early start, made even worse by the clocks needing to be moved forward one hour - so it was like setting the time for 5 am! At 7:30 am we gathered with others doing tours, for our first ever Princess-organised tour.

We came to Corfu on our 2009 cruise, so had already covered a lot on our own. The Princess tour covered a lot of ground that we hadn't seen, in a half day of 4.5 hours.

First, we headed by bus to the beautiful Achilleion Palace, built in 1890 by the tragic Empress Elizabeth of Austria (Sissi). She was assassinated in 1898. Jan and I keep hearing about her, ever since we visited the palace museum in Vienna when on our 2011 river cruise.

Our next stop was at a picturesque viewing point on the Kanoni Peninsula, overlooking Mouse Island, and the area where the town was first situated in ancient times, up until 600 AD. From here we could also see planes coming in to land at the airport with a very short runway.

Next we toured the villa/palace of Mon Repos. This was the birthplace of Prince Philip in 1921. It was built in the 1820s, and was eventually the summer palace for the Greek royal family.

 

Our tour guide was really excellent, and made both the Greek and the more modern stories come to life in a clear, simple, and humorous way. She was very clever and entertaining. As well as her story-telling, one fact I was particularly interested to learn was that it takes 5kg of olives to make 1 litre of olive oil.

Refreshments were included as part of the tour, on the waterfront looking towards the Old Fortress (built by the Venetians). There was to be a very short walk into the Old Town (that we'd already seen a lot of in 2009) and then a return to the ship. So we decided to say farewell to our Guide, and tour the Old Fort ourselves.

The Fort and surroundings were very interesting, and the views from there were worth the steep and slippery climb in the 29C heat. We checked out the adjacent Neoclassical Church of St George, which looks strangely out of place.

Then we headed into the maze of narrow streets in the Old Town in search of a shop where we could buy some much sought-after Koum Kouat liquor, grown from the local citrus fruit of the same name (that only grows in Corfu). With that successfully accomplished, we walked out onto the square near the New Fort, and were just in time to catch a packed local #16 bus back to the cruise terminal.

Crew members on the dock were handing returning passengers cool flannels that were much appreciated. Once back on board we had a late lunch at the buffet.

I knew that the draw for 500 free Internet minutes would have been done last night, so we headed down to the Internet Cafe to see if I'd won. As we looked around for a sign announcing the winner, David was telling me that I wouldn't be the winner. Moments later I turned around and spotted..... a sign with MY name on it! How exciting, and very deserving of course!

Next we sought out some loungers on deck and relaxed, reading (or in my case, starting on this blog post). We enjoyed sail-away at 5 pm - it was very beautiful leaving Corfu and heading south for our journey towards Istanbul.

Tonight we were freed from our late dining time, and at 6 pm we headed with the Barrows to the Da Vinci Dining Room for our first night trying 'Anytime Dining'. We were put with another couple at a table for six (much easier to hear the conversation around the smaller table). We had a very pleasant and quicker meal with this older, retired couple from a Vancouver suburb. The waiters handled my gluten-free meal very well, and the Maitre Di took my order for tomorrow evening. David and I splashed out on an after-dinner Limoncello each, also purchasing the souvenir Princess shot glasses.

After dinner, David and I wandered around the shops on the ship. We also enjoyed looking at the Art Gallery, where original art is displayed before an auction. The works shown are amazing, and one large painting caught my eye as being very suitable for our Family Room, until I discovered the Reserve price.... $84,000! There were some other nice, smaller pieces for under $1000, but we then need to add 15% GST plus shipping costs, assuming we won any piece at the auction (being held tomorrow).