Cruise Blogging: Corfu

On Tuesday (November 6th) we all visited a new country for the first time: Greece! So, so exciting. I've been wanting to go to Greece for as long as I can remember, and especially after living in Astoria for 5 years. I will, upfront, admit that I didn't eat a Greek salad there. No, we were total gluttons and stuffed our faces with Baklava and ice cream (I'm pretty sure the girls ate ice cream in every port). Not one vegetable crossed our lips!

Corfu was beautiful. I was surprised to see that many of the beautiful old buildings were abandoned (or, at least I hope they were abandoned. If not, the poverty there is even worse than I thought). You can easily see that the crisis has hit them hard. It was sad, because I'm sure Corfu was a successful city not so long ago. But today, buildings like this make up at least 25% of the city:

Nina guessed that this building in particular was probably home to 1,000 ghosts. It looked even creepier in real life.

Aside from ghost-hunting, eating baklava and ice cream, checking email at the ice cream place (wifi was everywhere) and voyeuristically watching people get fish pedicures, we decided to check out the fortress.

Here it is, in the distance. Apparently it was only recently opened to the public, lucky us!

This classic Greek temple was inside the fortress walls. So Greek looking!

Here are the girls, almost to the top. They were great troopers about climbing all those stairs. Well, what we thought were a lot of stairs. Turns out Monenegro would make the hike up Corfu's fortress seem like a cake walk!

Finally we made it to the top. And what a view from up there!

If you've ever wondered why my purse is so heavy, it's because I always carry a rhino with me, wherever I go. You know, for good luck.

Beautiful, clear Mediterranean!

Then we climbed back down, swung by Palaia Anaktora--the "old palaces," which used to house the King of Greece, and now look decrepit and scary. Behold (I'm stealing this image from wikipedia since we didn't take a picture of our own):

It doesn't look so creepy in this picture, but trust me, in real life it was scary. It was so creepy looking that Nina said under no condition would she ever want to live there, and she'd be happy in castle ruins (so long as grandpa was engaged in fixing them up).

Then it was back on the ship! I think it was Tuesday night that we took the girls to their first theater show. They loved it. There was singing, dancing, comedy, and an acrobatic routine. They were hooked, and after that we caught every show.