Greek Island Cruise Part Two

Our first port was Split, Croatia. For all ports except Athens and Olympia, I had decided we would do sight-seeing on our own without a tour or excursion. We woke up, had some breakfast at the buffet, and were off the ship by 8:30 am (one of the first people off the ship - this became a regular trend). It was an easy walk from the port to the town. In Split the main thing I wanted to see was the town itself. Within the town is an old walled-in area called Diocletian's Palace. It was a palace created for a retired Roman Emperor. There are some areas where you can see the Roman influence of architecture. Within the walls of the palace is basically the "Old Town" of Split. You can see everything from shops, cafes, markets to a cathedral, old bell tower, and run down homes.

I will say taking a tour of some sort through this area would have been more informative. We did have Rick Steves to guide us, so we kind of got the jest of what things were. But (especially in hind sight after doing other places with tours) I'm sure we would have learned a lot more and understood what we were seeing better if we had someone explaining/describing it. There were a lot of people selling walking tours all through Split, so we could have easily purchased one. At the time though, I was happy just wandering around and seeing things as we were on our own. We had wandered through the maze of alleys and corridors which make up the Old Town. We had also weaved through the open-air market, where I bought a neat coral bracelet. We had covered a lot of ground, but it was only noon. We made our way back to a cafe we had walked past earlier. This cafe was in a prime people watching location, and there was a local group of men who were singing right next to the cafe. I ordered some wine and Josh had a beer, and we happily sat people watching for an hour. This was probably one of the highlights of the day for me. I felt as if it made us "get a feel" for Split... or maybe that was the wine talking... either way, it made for an enjoyable afternoon.

After our afternoon drink, we decided to go back to the ship. I was happy with the sightseeing we had done, I couldn't think of anything more I wanted to do/see, and we were starving. Rick Steves didn't offer any suggestions for local food we had to try, and the appeal of food I'd already paid for was high. So we went back to the ship and had a late lunch. After our lunch settled, Josh wanted to go do the gym. Not my favorite thing, but I agreed to go with him. I will say, riding a stationary bike is much more enjoyable when you've got the view to go with it. However... there were people like Josh who were there to workout because they enjoy it/part of their routine/habit. There were people like me who were there to earn more dessert. And then there were meatheads. There were guys there who were realllllyyy into their workout and doing some major weight lifting. I get that there are people who are really into fitness or who are doing fitness competitions, and they need/want to keep up while on vacation. I get that and I respect it. However... packing weight lifting gloves for your vacation? That puts you in the meathead category. Add to my judgement that the gym on this ship was tiny. Very tiny. They had a lot of equipment that could keep most people happy, but the room itself was quite small.

After our workout we went and walked a few miles around the ship on the outdoor track. Then we showered and got ready for dinner. This sort of became our new routine while on the cruise - sight-see, come back, workout, then shower and dinner. That night dinner was amazing (they all were). After dinner we went to see the show that night, which was an all male Motown singing group. It was so much fun! The singers were talented both in song and dance. It made me think of my parents as they really would have enjoyed the show. After the show we decided to head to bed - we were tired and tomorrow was another day of exploring.

Day two lead us to Corfu, Greece. This was another port where we were going to explore on our own, and again, we were one of the first ones off the ship. Rick Steves said you could walk from the port to the town within 20 minutes - usually I subtract about 5-10 minutes from his time suggestions because of Josh's and my pace. But, the ship was offering a shuttle bus for a reasonable fee, and they stated the walk was closer to 30 minutes. We decided to take the shuttle bus, and I'm glad we did because it dropped us off right in the heart of town. Corfu is the greenest of the islands, and the day we were there it was sunny, hot, and humid. A nice change from the rain and chill we'd had in Germany. The island has two fortresses (one old, one new) on either side of the Old Town area. Our bus dropped us off right in front of the Old Fortress, so that is where we started.

So I will admit... the heat got to me that morning. We had gone from chilly fall weather back to hot (hot for me at least) and I most definitely was not acclimated to it. I was sweating, I was hot, and most of all I was NOT enjoying climbing around the ruins of the fortress. So. I climbed around the lower levels with Josh, but then I sat at a cafe and had a Coke while he hiked to the top.

After seeing the Old Fortress, we went through the Old Town, which like the Old Town in Split was a maze of winding streets. The area was full of little shops, mainly shops selling tourist junk. When I looked at a map, I thought the Old Town was going to be huge. As it turns out... it wasn't. After a few loops we figured out when/where we were overlapping areas we've already walked. We did buy some lunch from a little bakery - I got a ham and cheese "pie" - ham and cheese in phyllo dough, Josh got a spinich and feta pie. Both of them were amazing. We continued our stroll from the Old Town out along the bay. We saw the New Fortress, but didn't feel like going up it.

Once again, by afternoon we'd seen all we wanted to see and headed back to the ship for a late lunch. After our lunch I convinced Josh just to walk with me around the track versus competing with the meatheads in the gym. After we had walked a few miles, Josh decided he wanted to run for a bit, and told me he would catch up with me in a moment. The entertaining part about the ship's track is you pass by the same people over and over again. There was a group of older women from Liverpool talking loudly with a very strong accent (thank you Beatles for helping me to know that accent). After Josh started running, I passed by these ladies, and I heard one of them say, "Well, it looks like 'ee just up'an' left 'er, didn' 'ee?!" I giggled about that for the rest of my walk.

We were ready for dinner a little early, and I had seen on the ship's program (which listed all of the information about the day and what activities were happening during the day) there was going to be country music trivia. I convinced Josh to go do trivia with me. For this trivia they played a little 5-10 second snip-it of a song, and you had to write down what the title of the song was. At the end they read off the answers, and the winner got a prize. This girl got 16 our of 18 songs right. Whoop whoop, don't mess with Montana. Doing my father proud. Our prize was a Royal Caribbean key chain (um... yay!), but I thought the trivia was a lot of fun. Trivia before dinner became our new nightly ritual.

That evening the show we went to after dinner was a dance performance - I loved every minute of it. Josh said it was good, but I think he was being a good sport for my sake. It was neat to see all the different styles of dance the performers did. After the show, we (once again) decided to head for bed. The day of walking around wore us out.

The next morning we slept in because there wasn't a port that day - we were having a day at sea. Josh and I usually are up around 4:30 to get ready for work (I know, ugh). Being creatures of habit, even though our room didn't have any natural light, we were both awake by 6. We took our time getting ready, and then went to have breakfast in the main dining room. We were seated with some fellow American travelers, and we recieved great input and advice about cruising. After our breakfast we went to do some trivia, but we were the only people there... so of course we won. Ha ha. But we actually got to spend some time talking to the gal who was running the trivia, and it was interesting to hear her story of how she started working on the ship. The highlight of our morning was playing Bingo. That's right, Bingo. We bought cards to play in four games. We didn't win, and we were the youngest people there (which was another re-occurring theme on this cruise - most of the people were retirees, and there were only a small handful of families, and maybe a small handful of younger couples like us). But, despite this, Bingo was a lot of fun. After lunch we went to try to find a place to relax in the sun. Outside was packed with people sunbathing - it was hard to find a chair anywhere! All of the upper decks near the track and pool were packed, so we went to a lower deck and sat. I read a book while Josh took a nap in the sun. Josh went off to work out, but I stayed to hang out in the sun. Later we met up at the indoor adult only pool to sit in the hot tub. We went to do trivia that night before dinner, a fun ritual. After dinner we decided to get a drink and sit outside before the show. The show that night was a Beach Boys cover band, which was a lot of fun to listen to. After the show we went back outside and watched part of a movie that was showing on the outdoor screen. It was starting to get windy, so we decided to head in and go to bed... and get ready for our next port in Crete.