Our One Sea Day

Amazingly we will have only one sea day on this Crystal Serenity Cruise!  We are traveling on this cruise as part of the 30th Anniversary of SkyMed having earned this trip by meeting our sales goal!  We have sailed on many cruises but Crystal Cruises is by far a luxury cruise like none we've experienced.  The service is spot-on, food exciting and being all-inclusive-well just to say our "happy hours" are more than one hour...

On our sea day we met with about 45 SkyMed Ambassadors from the U.S., Mexico and Carribbean to share our "Best Practices" and our highlights of the cruise so far. 

afternoon ice cream break

While most people appreciated the top-notch staff and impeccable service, there were many comments about the comfy chairs, linens, free shuttles at every port and even the educational speakers. We also have another 35 "friends of SkyMed" sailing with us.  We haven't been to bed before midnight every night.

We rounded Italy and were next in Corfu, Greece.  

 We booked a private island tour, this time on Vespa Scooter - actually a 3-wheeled Mp3 scooter....

this would have really been fun.....

...sadly it was raining when we arrived and the Nikolaos, owner of the company, advised us that it would be uncomfortably cold and wet and happily canceled with full refund.

150 year old olive tree and still producing!

 He was able to find a cab driver, Spiros, who was available on Sunday, and provided a 3-hour tour to much of the same sites we would have visited. Corfu or Kerkyra is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea only about 2 miles off the coast of Albania.  

We started on the east side and stopped in Kanoni ("cannon") to view the the 17th Century church of Panagia Vlacherna with fine wooden carvings, frescoes and a tall bell tower.  This church overlooked "Mouse Island".  According to mythology this rocky island is the ship of Ulysses that was stoned by the god Poseidon.  In there center of the tiny island is a 13th century church.

Greek Orthodox church

I'm sure the used to walk up this narrow steps to ring the bells

17th century church

Driving overland to the west side of the island to the traditional village of Lacones with one lane roads, we took in the magnificent views of the Moni Agias Paraskevis and the two naturally formed heart shaped bays.  Here we sampled the local kumquat products including liquor and candy and of course locally produced olive oil. 

Lacones, Corfu

We met 3 generations of "Georges" here & bought local olive oil & kumquat marmelade

Jack had a Vespa just like this in 1970

Heart-shaped bays

We ended our day back in the Old Town of Corfu wandering the streets and searching for yet another geocache.

Ulysses Source: www.greeka.comU

According to mythology, this rocky island is the ship of Ulysses that was stoned by god Poseidon. In the center of the Mouse Island, there is the 13th-century church of Pantokrator. Source: www.greeka.com

According to mythology, this rocky island is the ship of Ulysses that was stoned by god Poseidon. In the center of the Mouse Island, there is the 13th-century church of Pantokrator. Source: www.greeka.com

According to mythology, this rocky island is the ship of Ulysses that was stoned by god Poseidon. In the center of the Mouse Island, there is the 13th-century church of Pantokrator. Source: www.greeka.com