We got an early start today. We had to be ready for our tour at 7:30 this morning, and it was well worth it. As I noted yesterday, we decided to do a 4-wheel adventure tour. We were hoping for Jeep Wranglers and got Suzuki Sidekick like 4-wheel drive SUVs. The SUV had a manual transmission, so the driving was left to me. The tour included a trip to the beach, a trip to a restaurant, and a trip to a small village store before we started the journey back to the pier.
Our guide was Stephanie, and she was fantastic. She was an excellent guide – knowing when to give us information and knowing when to just let us explore and take in the views and culture. I very much appreciated her approach, and I think that she was the best tour guide I have ever had. Enough with that, let’s talk about the ride…
So, there are two kinds of people, those who enjoy cliffs and those who do not. I happened to be in the car with one of each of these kinds of people, which made the day interesting. Allow me to introduce the players for the day: character playing person fearful of the car falling off the cliff – Cindy; character playing person hanging out window to get pictures – Dawn; and driver – Kim. We were the second car in the procession, which made it easy for us. The ride took us up to mountains, and the views were amazing. The ride had a total of 27 hairpin turns, and some of them were really tight and were along the cliff, so the view was open and incredible unless you were Cindy, and then they were terrifying. Dawn and I often had to say to Cindy, do not look left (or right) so that she would not see the cliffs and thus not have an anxiety attack. The pictures are beautiful, and they will be added here once I have a strong enough signal to upload them.
At one point during the ride down the mountain, Dawn was hanging out of the window (not really, but she did have body parts outside of the car) taking pictures. Cindy told her to make sure that she did not drop her phone, to which Dawn responded that she should not worry as she was holding on to her knobby (a pop socket on the back of her phone). Cindy followed up by asking if her knobby was secure. That caused a bit of laughter while we were driving. It is never a dull moment when we are together – further examples of this a bit later.
Our tour guide told us that one of the famous chase scenes in For Your Eyes Only was filmed on the same streets that we drove – now that is pretty cool. That being said, I am not sure how they were able to drive so fast on some of those roads. Major kudos to the stunt people. Another cool thing from the day was that we could see Albania from one of the locations. I knew that it was close, but I forgot how close it was to Greece or that we would be able to actually see it from where we were.
I also learned that driving a stick is like riding a bike – it all comes back to you. It was so much fun, and I really enjoyed the chance to drive in Greece. It was never on my bucket list, but it is now, and it is checked off!
When we got back to the ship and Dawn and Cindy went to the pool, and I decided to hang out on the balcony and read. We left Corfu at 3:00 p.m. and headed for Athens, Greece. When Cindy and Dawn came back from the pool, we decided to have dinner in the room so that we could watch the sunset.
After dinner, we decided to take in a show…big mistake. It was not good, so we left after the third song. The person had been a “finalist” on XFactor UK in 2008. think that things have changed for him since that time – not saying for good or bad, but I do not think that he would be a finalist today. So, we then decided to go to a trivia night. It was adult trivia, and the host was a character. We laughed at how animated he was in reading the questions. Cindy’s favorite was this riddle: I go in your mouth hard and turn soft, and I do not mind if you blooooow (for emphasis as that is how he read the question) me. Now, get your mind out of the gutter as the answer was bubble gum. We must have repeated that one a few times, just copying how he said it.
After trivia, we went to the room, and I started to blog. We were all in the “living room” and just started talking and laughing. We must have laughed for an hour straight at least, and sometimes for no apparent reason. Once we started, it was all over. I wish I had had my recorder going as each of us made priceless comments, but I cannot recall them. Below are a few that I can remember.
At one point, Dawn asked, how can room service be available from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. I proceeded to explain how a clock works, and the next question asked was well when don’t they service room service. I then explained it was from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. This may not be funny to others or to us when we read it at a later date, but I assure you that it resulted in much laughter when it occurred – trust me on that!
Another funny moment happened when Cindy asked if I had any extra eye makeup remover wipes, and Dawn pipes in with I have some funny things that will help you. I am asking that they stop for the night as I do not have enough space to continue including all of these quips in today’s blog.
As always, thank you for reading.