Apollo Palace Corfu

... a friendly (still heavily armed) Jordanian solider and are able to finish the border formalities within the next two hours, whilst our car is x-rayed.

Third ferry experience: Igoumenitsa (Greece) – Bari (Italy): approx 300km

Superfastferries is a company deserving of its name.

Tickets:
We arrive at the port at 23:00 and try our luck in getting tickets for the next day’s ferry. A very friendly and efficient ...

... Greek wine and their local Ouzo. I ate Pastitsia, a pie with layers of pasta and meat but I kept eating Stee's dinner of this fish cooked in peppers and onions. Vance doesn't do fish so he had a harder time with the menu options. Everyone was in a great mood so we ended up just sitting and talking and laughing and drinking and eating for quite awhile.

... tastic. Truly, it's been great.

When I arrived in my room I had a momentary hiccup where I just was so sad. I hadn't really missed Larry or felt home sick too much during the trip, but for some reason, on the cruise, in the room by myself, I just broke down. BUT. I told myself, "Josie, you are here and you're alone. But you're here." From that point on it was, pardon -- or don't, the pun, smoooooth sailing.

I had a FABULOUS welcome treat in my room in the form ...

... three levels, 5, 6 and 7, for shopping, eating, drinking, lounges, and entertainment. Levels 8, 9, 10, 11 and parts of 12 and 13 are for sleeping cabins. Levels 15 and 16 have swimming pools, bars, spa pools, tennis court, mini golf, beauty spa, gym, kids club, disco and an often frequented gelato spot, which serves the biggest tubs we have seen yet.

Chris and Robyn are in a balcony suite on level eight and enjoy sitting watching the different ...

... us breakfast and dinner so we can deal with it. We got here on our 5 year anniversery and we have just layed out on the beach for 4 days and now we are officailly CRAZY tan (sorry barb). We are off to santorini next 9 hour bus to Athens then a 6 hour ferry. FUN.

... they spend a lot of time relaxing, because they live on an island. I have only one dislike. The water was too cold and dirty for my taste, but there are a lot of swimming pools around, so I didn't need to swim in the open. This journey was a fun journey and I will never forget it.

... everyone else instead of going to Patras
-Tatum and friend sleep through arrival and end up in Patras (Smitty tried unsuccessfully to wake them up)
According to Bosh's mom in an email, the weather back home is "pittsy"
-Callahan reduced to tears when hearing about this
-brought to teams again minutes later upon discovering that "pittsy" was not a typo

June 19-22: Corfu, Greece (The Pink Palace)
Creepy ol' Wes ...

... PALACE!!! First things first, do you wanna guess, well its not checking in and nope its not breakfast, here i will just tell you its a pink ouzo shot at 7 30 am! With a still drunk DJ, and yes again its 7 30 am giving us the welcome speach and telling us all we need to know about the pink palace!!! What is going on, did we make it to the right place??? Yes we were in the right place, the PINK PALACE!!! To be continued tomorrow as I am running out of internet time!!!

Me and Will decided to leave Rome and travel to Corfu on Saturday. We looked up all the trains and ferries, got freaked out that we couldn't book the ferry, so phoned up and checked. Everything was fine. We vaguely considered booking train tickets in advance, but then decided agaisnt it. The idea *was* to get the day train, about 1pm, from Rome to Brindisi, and then an overnight ferry to Corfu. So, we got up early-ish on Saturday morning, after a comic ...

... other tourists at the top of the mountain, most of them watching the blaze and taking pictures with themselves in the foreground. To enter the monastery compound one had to be 'respectfully dressed' which excluded the majority of the tourists, many of whom wore just bikinis or swimming trunks. For those who wanted a look around but found themselves deemed unsuitably attired a woman sat at a wooden table at the entrance and handed out frumpy-looking floral frocks in ...