Corfu & Valletta

Sunday, 11 Dec 2011 –We, especially Sally, have been slow to recover from jet-lag.  During the past two days our ship has crossed and then re-crossed time zones by sailing east from Venice to Dubrovnik and then west again to Corfu.  Today we are back on “Venice time,” which is seven hours ahead of Quad-City time (CST).  Having excursions several days in a row is also tiring, with the result that, up to today, these two old folks have headed back to the cabin after dinner each night instead of seeking entertainment.  Sally is looking forward to a day “at sea” but we still have tomorrow’s visit to Tunisia before that happens.  Some people do skip excursions, staying on the ship instead; however, even though we had visited Malta and Tunisia previously, we signed up to see them again.

Today, we visited Valletta, Malta.  Malta is an island in the Mediterranean with a long history, with very old fortifications in the harbor that make an impressive view as a ship arrives to dock there.  Our guided tour included a bus ride through the three gates, and a walking tour inside the Inquisitor’s Palace and dungeons, among other sights.  We also had a tasty, traditional lunch at a nice restaurant, complete with wine.

After dinner, we enjoyed our first Princess Showtime presentation during this cruise, which featured Broadway vocalist, Michelle Murlin.  Her credits include “Cats,” Les Miserables,” and “Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”  Although Jesse slept during most of the show, he claimed to have been “listening in his sleep.”

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Saturday, 10 Dec 2011 – We were awakened from sleep at 6:00 A.M., the earliest since leaving home, to prepare for our day trip to Corfu, Greece. On top of that, being totally unprepared for the chilly, windy, rainy weather when we stepped off the ship, we dashed back to our cabin (a long way!) to fetch rain gear. When we returned to the place where we had left the group, they were gone! At first, we believed we had been left, but eventually we figured out that they had left on a shuttle to a further point where they could board another bus, and they had waited there for us. The weird thing was that Jesse had not slept well all the previous night (very unusual for him) because he had nightmares about being left behind!

Corfu is a Greek island on the Ionian Sea at the northwestern edge of Greece, just south of Albania. It has a long history as a “highway” between the Greece and the West. Olive trees are everywhere, and the rocky coastline is breathtaking. Our minibus driver wound around the hairpin turns, obeying frequent stoplights that signaled one-way traffic on the narrow roads. We stopped for lunch in a restaurant that was perched high on a cliff; the view was of the surf far below and some nearby tiny islands (basically huge rocks). We also visited the Achilleion palace/museum, originally designed as a villa in 1890 for the Empress of Austria. It was cloudy but not raining for most of our 7-hour tour.

             We ended the day with a “formal” dinner with our new friends.