Robbins Ramblings: Day Seven

Firstly an apology to Diarra for posting the last two days in the morning rather than the preceding night. I didn’t realise that the publication was so eagerly awaited. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

During the night the sea became quite rough for a spell and Victoria tells us that there was a severe thunderstorm with some terrific lightning. I didn’t see any but I did feel the boat rock a bit.

Oliver became a little concerned first thing as the toilet in his cabin wouldn’t flush, which meant Poppy coming into our cabin to go to the loo. The situation then seemingly became worse as our toilet refused to flush as well, Oliver now thinking that he had blocked the entire ship’s sanitary system. Thankfully we were informed by the steward that it was a temporary fault which was cleared in minutes much to Oliver’s [and everyone else’s] relief.

The entry into Corfu is spectacular with the mountains of Southern Greece on one side as we approach the island on the other. Today was a little overcast so the pictures don’t really do the view justice.

We split up first thing with Victoria and family catching one of the early shuttle buses into town, where they walked to the top of the old fort.

Joey made it about halfway up but Poppy did get to the top,

by which time another shower had started.

Meanwhile Sylvia and I decided to take our time for a stroll around town looking at the shops, the anoraks that we had bought last year coming into their own.

Corfu is a lovely little town with narrow steep streets so typical of the Mediterranean but after about an hour there is very little to do. We did however discover a little gem of a museum, “The Banknote Museum of the Ionian bank”, which provided a potted history of modern Greece through it’s paper currency. Highlights included , the first notes issued when the Greek islands were a British protectorate [in shillings and pounds], moving through the first Greek currency [Colonata] to Drachmas. Most interesting was the 100,000,000,000 drachma note from the end of the war which apparently was just enough to buy a loaf of bread, and we think inflation is bad now!!!

We then returned to the ship for lunch to find that Victoria and the children were also back leaving Oliver to search for the museum and any unique Greek energy drinks. After eating Victoria and I returned to town for another look around the shops. The weather had picked up a little by this time but was still not brilliant.

We even saw what we thought at first was Marmaduke!!!

One of the best things about the Freedom Dining option we have chosen is the ability to choose a different eating place each night, tonight it was the turn of the Italian. Unlike the other speciality restaurants there is no cover charge here although one or two of the dishes attract a premium, such as the prawns chosen by Sylvia and Victoria for their starter….