We had planned to go ashore today. It was a tender and Santorini is one of our favourite islands. However my cold got worse and I had a night of coughing it’s not the first time it’s happened whilst we’ve been cruising … I call it Kennel Cough … oppps I meant Cabin Cough… usually brought on by the Ships air conditioning.…. So today’s pictures are taken by John from the ship … we sat watching others tender and the going up and down on the funicular. It certainly looked a bustling small village.
Virgin was also anchored near to us and they had a tall ship excursion.
We went to reception to find out about disembarking tomorrow … it all seemed much the same as normal … all suitcases out side the door by midnight, out of cabin by 8.00am but you don’t have to leave the ship until 3.00pm…. If we had known that we probably wouldn’t have bought a viator excursion to use up the time until our 9.00pm flight. The day passed in a bit of a haze… packing done … envelopes for our cabin steward and both our dear waiters and before you knew it, it was time for supper… tonight’s menu was probably the least interesting we’ve had all week … but it was fine…
After bidding Saleem farewell and saying that we would see Moogessen at breakfast we retired to our cabin for our last night on MSC Opera.
Today is a sea day, our only one… so we had a lie in… I’ve managed to pick up a ‘Cabin Cough’ ….a sniffly cold with a nagging cough which keeps John awake. It’s usually brought on by the ships air conditioning . The good news is my hand, bottom and back no longer hurt from my fall yesterday but my left knee is painful to straighten and bend this prevented a good nights sleep. Today walking has become even slower than usual. Well that’s the medical update !!!!! We had breakfast in the restaurant selecting what we wanted and Moogessen served laughing and joking with us.
After breakfast we went to guest services to see about having our double charged Corfu excursion refunded to our credit card…. No! They can’t do that … the day before we disembark we can go to a machine and it will refund us in Euros….. we questioned this because it was their mistake not ours but we will end up paying twice for a non sterling transaction and we have to accept what ever exchange rate they give us in Euros…. Ummmmm not very happy that we have to pay for their mistake……. we went to go up on deck… however we were told we couldn’t use the lift because those that failed to turn up for the official Muster drill on Embarkation were doing it in the Theatre… so all lifts were out of use for at least 30 minutes…. John had a few words to say about that especially as due to my knee walking up the stairs in a non emergency situation was not good…. Just as John had finished his reasoned response the lift doors opened and people poured out… at which point the lady said we could use it as it was a ridiculous situation… something MSC should sort out… punishing people who have done the right thing seemed ludicrous… Anyway finally on deck and every sunlounger, on both levels, had a towel or a person on it … not an empty one in sight.. there were no staff preventing the reservation of loungers by towels even though the person probably wouldn’t be using it for hours…. shame !!! We finally found a table with 2 chairs in the direct sun on the edge of the heaving dance floor…. It was only 10.15am….. more and more people poured onto the floor…
. We sat for about 45 minutes before trying to find a shaded table but the only ones were on the smokers area which was thick with smoke so we gave it a miss and retreated back down stairs to our quiet bar for a game of Canasta… After which we decided to have a before lunch siesta!!! There was a bottle of Prosecco in an ice bucket, a plate of macaroons and two bars of dark chocolate in our room….. we are diamond loyalty and this is what they give you on Dress to Impress night….. Well! The before lunch siesta turned into an all day one….. my body must have been more shaken up than I thought and John, bless him, just looked after me by letting me sleep. I naturally woke up just before 5pm and felt quite a bit better… I showered and did my face and hair ready for tonight’s black tie event…. I wonder if John will be the only one in a Dinner Jacket!!! We will have to wait and see.
We stopped off in the bar near the dinning room for a mock-tail… Aida cruise ship was not far away travelling in the same direction.
We went out to the restaurant at 7.00pm and John was presented with a red paper rose. We were both very over dressed…We didn’t see another DJ or Evening gown….. it was a nice menu which we both enjoyed
The meal seem to take an eternity tonight with the Baked Alaska being paraded at 8.30pm we finally got out at 8.45pm and returned to our cabin… de-robed and had an early night… my efforts had dwindled and I as looking forward to another sleep … Good night everyone.
Well!! our clocks went back an hour as we crossed over to Italy….. this is always a problem when you’re at sea as you never know whether your phone alarm will have caught up with the time zone … it hadn’t so the alarm went off at 5.45am…. Checking it with my watch I reset it and had another hours shut eye!!!! We had learnt, at supper yesterday, from a very helpful couple from Sidney, Australia; that the breakfast in the dinning room was quick, quiet and tasty so we gave it a whirl. Sure enough it was great… we were seated straight away and had a MSC Express … bacon , eggs, tomato, mushrooms and hash brown. Also a 8 /10 cup of coffee … yeah …We were in and out in less than 30 minutes.
Todays excursion meeting venue was in the Cotton Club.. Although the meeting time was 8.00am we didn’t actually leave until 8.20am as the ship was late docking.
We were quickly on our bus as soon as the gangway opened. Today we are visiting Alberobello. This literally means “beautiful tree”. It is a small town near Bari in the heel of southern Italy. It has about 10,200 inhabitants and is famous for its unique trullo buildings. The trulli of Alberobello have been designated as a UNESCO site since 1996. Alberobello is known as one of “The most beautiful villages of Italy”. The bus took about an hour to get there and it parked up a 10 minute walk from the town square.
Unfortunately it began to rain quite heavily just as we arrived. The guide told us that in the 15th Century a tax Levi was put on all new houses. The oldest buildings were circular in shape and the newer 16th century ones were square. Her tour took us around the streets of the oldest ones. They are all made from white rock bricks which fit together like Lego with no other materials holding them together.. all have conical roofs with drainage channels which either ran into their own private wells …
Our guide pointing out a private well.
…or into the street and down into the river at the bottom of the hill. Today’s main road is where the river used to be and that’s where all the houses got their water from unless they had their own well. The roofs, like the buildings, are self supporting, held together in their conical shape by the forces of nature.. equal pressure on all sides. The roofs were embellished with decorative pinnacles representing the signature of the architect. Over the front door is an extended slab. If this is pulled out the front section of the roof collapses. It was designed like this so that in olden times when the inspectors came to tax the houses the owner would quickly pull out the slab so that the inspectors saw a lot of rumble and an unfinished house so no tax was levied. Our guide laughed and said Italians have been dodging paying taxes ever since!!!!
We walked up and around the streets …
The architects signature on the top of the roof.
A lot of the trulli houses are now shops.
At the top of one of the streets we came across the Church of St Nicholas.
Coming back down the quaint stone street I managed to slip as I stepped down one of the steps and landed flat on my bottom… thank goodness for the copious amounts of padding. No real damage just some aches and pains, dirty white trousers and a thumb which is more painful than normal… a big thank you to the elderly gentleman and our New York living Mexican acquaintance who rushed to my aid and helped me up. Amazingly the rain suddenly stopped. We sat having a much needed drink in the town square.
Slippery steps
We returned to the coach in good time, as it departed back to the ship promptly at 13.00.
Our journey back to the ship was slightly longer as a road was closed and the bus had to U-turn… but we were back shortly before 2.00pm. The ship was filling up with new cruisers. Bari is a start and finish point, which we hadn’t realised. In fact we were in the minority getting on in Athens. Luckily most the newbies had yet to discover the buffet so we had a relatively quiet lunch, followed by rest up time and a couple of paracetamol to help the now sore and achy knees and derrière!!!
We had our usual table in the main dinning room restaurant, thanks to Selvina who seats us each evening.
Another pleasant menu. The ship was still docked when we sat down and there was some lovely street art/ murals. Part way through our meal we started to sail away and we were treated to a rather nice sunset, across the wake of the ship ( surprising as we’ve hardly seen the sun today). A lovely sight.
After our meal we headed to our usually quiet bar only to find it heaving with people. There was some ABBA music playing and everyone was dancing … we think it’s a school holiday in Italy because our new cruisers have a massive amount of children with them….. I know I am old school but I really dislike seeing babies being shaken about in the arms of their hip-hop dancing parents… it can’t do the babies brains any good and children dancing on the dance floor when adults are trying not to squash them at 10.45 pm is not good… it’s adult time….Like I said I am old school….
We finished our drinks quickly and headed for the quiet sanctuary of our cabin…
A big shout out for Hannah who once again sorted our website out for us… I don’t know what I’d do if she wasn’t willing and able to sort all my blunders out… THANK YOU…. If any of you have WordPress sites and need a hand just drop me an email and I’ll ask Hannah if I can pass her details on to you. Also before I say goodnight I am sorry if anyone’s emailed us on 2jsworldofadventure@gmail.com
I won’t be able to get back to you until next Wednesday because I have no internet on my iPad and I can’t remember my password to log in on my phone…. Sorry… if you’re desperate for a reply just fill in a comments/feedback on the website and I’ll pick your message up like that …. Sorry
Last nights show, in the theatre, was a musical tribute to some of the biggest icons for the last 70 years…. It wasn’t the best we’ve seen… only two sang and the rest was recorded backing vocals and dancing… nothing really to write home about so I’ll leave it there and move on to Day 5 ….
This morning we woke without the alarm and got up… hard decisions to make… does one put ones one peice swimming costume before breakfast and hope you don’t need the toilet or does one change on the beach…. Ummm … I risked it and struggled into rent a tent!! Pulling a large T-shirt and my standard white baggy linen trousers …. Right! ready for breakfast… we couldn’t decide which restaurant served breakfast so once again we braved the buffet. This time we tried the other side and although it may have been my imagination it seemed less manic. I spied a free table and endeavoured to reach it, politely asking a gentleman, who was sat in the aisle with his adoring 15 strong family around him, to “excuse be” whilst gesturing Incase he didn’t understand me…. No response!!! Well!!! There’s some truth in the saying “if you can’t beat them join them” !!! So mustering all my strength I barged passed his chair almost catapulting him under the table .. all done with a lovely smile and an “oops so sorry”… I think he got the idea and shuffled his chair in to let John pass. Yeah! We have a table … from there on breakfast was quite simple…. Noisy but at least we could get to the food. …….. oh no !!! I did need the toilet … so I raced back to the cabin whilst John finished his coffee… dilemma overcome and we still make it to the theatre for our excursion in good time even though John is shaking his head at me in dispair…. Obviously not convinced that my tactics were brilliantly executed !!!! Bus Numero 12 was called luckily our French is better than our non existent Italian so when the caller forgets the English we still have some idea of what’s going on…
Today is our beach day…. I just love swimming in the sea so I am like “tigger” bouncing and bounding around. The coach took about 20 minutes to get to an area above a Sandy beach resort. It was Makris Gialos Beach and the beach facility was called Costa Costa beach. The track was quite steep and wound down onto a lovely yellow Sandy beach. Two loungers and a parasol were €30 , which we willingly paid…
We quickly stripped down to our swim suits and went straight into the sea… a few of our fellow beach goers squealed as they paddled in the cool ripples. But we are British we are made of stronger stuff than that !!! Out we waded and 1..2…3… we were in…. It was lovely , only taking seconds for our bodies to acclimatise to the temperature of the soothing sea… we swam, bobbed about and enjoyed the submergance.
Some considerable time later we took up residency on our loungers.
We did a repeat of this 3 times. Our lounger time was spent people watching and laughing in amazement at the adaptation of a paddle boat.
A lovely time spent on the beach. John played in the sand for a while !!!
We changed out of our wet costumes and meandered up to the bar for a Coke Zero.
We returned up the steep track and fortunately the bus was already there. He had just prevented a couple from embarking but I blew him a kiss and he opened the door…. I was probably the only person who had thanked him when he had dropped us off… he also turned the aircon up and gave me the thumbs up I blew him another kiss…
On returning to the ship we had a quick salad lunch and a Magic Island Mock-tail in our nearest bar before retiring for a siesta…. I went out like a light and only woke in time to shower and change for supper.
Now let me tell you about the shower … it is a sort of triangle with the longest straight side being about 2 foot and the other straight side being about 18 inches. To wash one’s hair you need to stick your head in the corner under the water meaning your derrière pushes itself out and becomes shrouded in the shower curtain. The opposite happens when you wash your derrière with your head pushed against the shower curtain… it really would pay to be a contortionist… if anyone has found an easier way to use this tiny shower I am open to ideas!!!!
Having completed the task, dried hair, ‘booted and suited’ we headed for the dining room…. Once again we had a wake view in Salem’s area. A nice menu allowed for a pleasant meal.
A quick night cap and we’re off for an early night as we have a busy day tomorrow….. So after applying copious amount of moisturiser to my lobster pink front, back and nose!!!!… we will say good night until we reach Bari.
Before starting the new day I think it’s important to give you a quick glimpse of our theatre experience yesterday evening. We seated ourselves in the theatre about 50 minutes prior to the start of the show. We had a choice of seats but as the time got closer to its start the theatre got really full. The show was called Storm… well!!! Wow! Wow! Wow! Cirque de Soleil you better watch out…. This was one of the best Cruise Ship Theatre shows we have ever seen
So…. Moving on to Day 4 ……
The day started with our ship pulling into Corfu dock next to The Queen Victoria, a Cunard Ship.
Similar to yesterday we went to the buffet for breakfast….. I think tomorrow we will try the restaurant because the buffet really is a case of”fight the good fight with all thy might”!!! Getting a table is hard enough but getting some food without being pushed, shoved, trodden on is nearing impossible….. so with that early morning ordeal over with we headed for the excursion desk. We had received our tickets for todays excursion under our door last night… they had been duplicated so we needed to check that we hadn’t been charged twice… The lady at the desk said we wouldn’t have been, but when I pointed out there were 4 different ticket numbers she looked into it and realised yes we had been charged twice so she said we would get a refund for two of them…. I’ll be chasing that up…
Then on to the theatre to wait for the start of our excursion….. As we have visited the sights of Corfu before we had selected a scenic coastal cruise so we could see the island from the water and there were chances of seeing dolphins and turtles. 9.35am our tour was called and with what seems to be the normal amount of pushing and shoving by some very loud Italians we headed out to the coach……. we have never cruised with so many Italians and I am certain they are not all rude, loud and very pushy but those that have been around us on this cruise have certainly shown themselves in very poor light when it comes to good manners and common decency towards other people. ….. Rant over !!!!!
The coach took us along the quayside, around the dock to the other side, from where we walked to a smallish boat, which seated about 35 on the lower deck and 15 on the top deck. We headed for the top deck…… I was quite proud of the way I shinned up the stepladder…. Not bad for a little round ball on legs!!!!!! We found virtually the last 2 seats…ummmm no 2 laddies arrived and squeezed in…..and then a very pushy young man arrived with sour faced girlfriend in tow and decided where they were going to sit, regardless of the fact that someone else was already say there!!!! Another example of total disregard for other people….. but as a firm believer of Karma remember this couple for later on….. This time the top deck really was totally full and we set sail. Our tour was supposed to be in English and the lady commentating started well in English… We sailed past the old and new fort and the monastery on the top of the hill.
Our Captain then retraced our steps and we sailed up the coast in the opposite direction… we were just beginning to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery and the peace and tranquility when soundenly our eardrums got a bashing and modern music blasted out of the speakers… surely not !!!! But yes the peacefulness was definitely broken… what’s more the music only stopped when the guide wanted to speak and she was suddenly saying very little in English and a lot in Italian…….. not funny when you’ve booked and paid for a English narrated tour…. Grrrr!!!
She did point out an area where King Charles likes to visit and an area where British holiday makers visit…. Before rattling on for a long time in Italian with lots of ‘Angles’ being said and hoots of laughter from the Italians…. Now! we could tell our nationality was being laughed at but not what was being said.. we were defiantly feeling very uncomfortable and humiliated…. Not nice….. we tried hard to concentrate on the scenery.
On we cruised, the couple opposite us, who had been pushed out of their preferred seats by the couple who I now refer to as the 2 Italian Ignoramuses, leant forward and said the narrator had just said in Italian to turn your mobile phone on to flight mode because we were close to Albania and we could pick up roaming charges as it is outside the EU. I thanked the couple very much as without their help we wouldn’t have known what was said. It turns out that they are from Germany and had expected the commentator to speak in English, their English was perfect and we were very grateful to find out that we were not the only non Italians on the top deck. We continued along the coast for a little longer before the narrator announced we were coming to an area where people could swim. Well! At least that stopped the surly faced Italian Ignoramose from vaping for a few minutes because in front of everyone she had to put her “Ipsy bitsy” bikini on… … unfortunately she managed it too quickly and the vaping started again… thankfully the boat pulled up on to a pebble strip of beach and everyone from the top deck excluding ourselves and The German couple went down for a swim. Peace at last … no more “jabber, jabber hoot hoot”…..
A member of the crew came and moved the seat opposite us and behind it was a drum barrel bar-b-cue, on which he proceeded to cook spiced sausages and kababs … amazing…
We got chatting to the kind couple from Germany. Lillian and Jonas had got on the cruise in Bari. They were both Drs and had done some of their training in a part of Germany we liked, we had visited it on a cruise -Warnemunde. A very interesting couple… who like us had expected a quiet scenic cruise with wonderful scenery and wildlife views in a peaceful surround…. They had also expected the commentary to be in English not Italian and they were not amused by the Italian Ignoramus couple who had literally pushed them off their chosen seat… The guide came up to see if we were ok and I tried hard to explain that we were not happy with her obvious comments about the English which had sent the Italians on board the boat roaring and hooting with laughter. But she either pretended not to understand or her English really wasn’t up to being a guide for this type of trip…. She did manage perfectly easily to explain a lot of the recent history to Jonas. We were actually beginning to enjoy this totally missold cruise… so we thank Lillian and Jonas for coming to our rescue and having nice conversation with us .. they made our excursion enjoyable…
The swimming hour passed too quickly and everyone soon arrived back on board. Lillian and Jonas choose to sit next to us and a few of the original people didn’t reappear and a couple of new people took their seats. The ship was pulling away from its mooring when suddenly on the beach the Italian Ignoramus duo appear running out of the bushes shouting and waving for the boat to stop….. Lillian and I looked at each other and said “Karma”. The 4 of us had a good laugh … the couple were really waving and shouting… the boat took a few minutes to stop and manoeuvre back into the shore…. They were a bit sheepish when they came back up to collect their shoes. Both John and Jonas went and collected two plates of food each. Jonas kindly helped John by taking the food to let John climb the ladder. It was quiet and peaceful while everyone ate …then the loud music began again and everyone apart from the 4 of us started dancing… this excursion should have been sold as a party coastal cruise because that is what it was… We were fairly pleased to return to our ship to escape the loud noisy crowd we had unwittingly been on an excursion with. We do however sincerely thank Lilian and Jonas for their company and we hope to catch up with them on another occassion.
Back on The Opera we headed for the bar and had a couple of Magic Island Mock- tails and a game of canasta before returning to our cabin for a siesta.
Once again we arrived at the restaurant in good time and were seated in Salem’s serving area in a wake view window. The meal was very nice, tonight had a Mediterranean theme and we both enjoyed the seafood. Moogessen, who waiters in Saleem’s area presented me with a tissue white rose .. a. Nice touch..
Before heading into the theatre for tonight’s Medley of Iconc Hits we enjoyed a lovely sunset… and on that note we’ll say goodnight !!
2 J's World of Adventure 