Corfu, Greece July 28

It’s another hot one, but not nearly so.

This stop in Corfu is replacing Albania. We were supposed to be in Albania today, but apparently the last time the ship was there is was pretty crappy, so they have moved the port to Corfu – good for most but we and some others on the ship will be in Corfu as part of the last 7 days, so it would have been nice to stop someplace different. We decide to take our Corfu tour on this stop and take the next day in Corfu off. I don’t know which the right decision was. The tour starts at a palace with a guide that is quite quiet and we have a hard time hearing him. The palace is VERY, VERY crowded. We’ve been to our share of palaces in Europe and this one is at the bottom of the list. I’m not comparing this to Versailles only. We’ve been to many small out of the way palaces that are spectacular and this one just isn’t. This pretty much ranks up (or down) there as one of the worst tours all around. It is made a bit better by a stop in the town where we visit a Greek Orthodox Church (very cool) and then) time on our own where we shop and stop at a café.

I am hoping to find an olive tree wood salad bowl to buy. I remember seeing all sorts of things made out of olive oil wood from previous times we’ve been in olive growing areas so I hope to buy one. We see quite a few, but decide to wait a bit and as we will be back in Corfu next week decide to wait and see what they have in Dubrovnik which is where I remember seeing this type of things last year.

The rest of the day is spent relaxing and napping. We are glad to be gaining an hour tonight with a time zone change and to be sleeping in tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Dubrovnik. Since we were there last year for a week we have opted for a day without a tour. We plant to visit some of the places we particularly enjoyed last year maybe even finding a salad bowl.