Seven Islands Corfu

... are very necessary, as the border formalities, filling out of numerous Arabic documents and other arbitrary checks take as much time in the chaos of the boarding. The only way to navigate this confusion is by employing two expensive fixers.

ETD (estimated time of departure):
The boat leaves with about an average of one or four hours delay.

Passenger areas:
People generally lie around on deck or sit on the steps leading down to ...

... 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.

... I employed my Italian skills to find the right place to go. They employed their English skills to go where I went. Then there's the CA couple that I ate lunch with one day, that also were on the shuttle with us. There's the little Italian couple that I met at the Meringue Party, who I danced with the woman for 2 or 3 songs. There's the couple that sat on the balcony with me during the official cruise send off, who helped me climb up to the balcony -- okay, actually it was a ...

We are on the MSC Musica at present cruising the Mediterranean. The blog is being written on the 13th floor of the ship with unobstructed views through floor to ceiling glass for as far as the eye can see.

Embarkment was at Bari – a city that will certainly have a claim to fame, but having been spoilt so far with the places visited, we put Bari into the run down, tied and not a necessary stop while in Italy category. The ship is huge; it ...

... But it was a lot of fun when we got there (although so dodgy, no long pants or gloves or safety talk or anything) and think I was champion of the girls ha.

After that just went and sat on the beach and chatted to people and enjoyed the niceness of it all. Was such a cute place and a lovely night. And we spent our last night sleeping on the boats which was very sad because we'd had such an amazing time. But no time to be sad cause next morning we were off to Athens!

... to dock for our drive to Plateria, the little town we were sailing from. We had the most amazing view from the water of the Greek coastline, it was very pretty. So we docked, drove to Plateria and saw out boats.... Well at first glance they seemed a little on the small side - and we only had a crew of 5, some people had 6! But they were actually pretty cool, the lounge area converted into 3 beds (4 if you used the table) and the back room had 2 couch things that ...

... 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 ...

... tourists in eye contact or conversation, but this may be because many do not speak English unless they work in shops in the tourist areas. Those that I had to connect with were very helpful and friendly, but generally were also my age or younger so I believe that change is coming slowly with this more global era we live in. One gentleman did try to engage me in a conversation, in Italian- thankfully I speak Spanish which has similar words to ...

... so well, got a lot spilt on me mostly, but it was Canada vs the World, and our team won! The prize was yet another shot. Such a crazy place. Hung out with a few people and danced for the night away (well not that late, but it had been a long day) Wednesday, June 8th, Got up this morning very happily hangover free! It was somewhat shocking considering the amount I had had to drink the night before. Alls well that ends well I say :P ...