Sunday: July 6
Corfu Greece, A Hilly Bike Ride
We slept fine, got up, and grabbed our usual breakfast. Previously, I was wearing long pants and long sleeves to avoid the sun, but for the bike, I wore shorts and tee-shirt, so I needed to get covered in sun screen. I brought my small backpack, which was almost filled with my SLR, along with my glasses and sun screen.
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We went down just before the time we were to meet on the pier, and we found that we were not yet finished docking. Talk about calling it close. After about 5 minutes, they opened the gate and let us start going out.
I was in Group 1. We got on the bus, and then drove about 20 minutes or so. We got off the bus, walked up a steep driveway, and found the bikes. We got the usual safety lecture and an intro to the route. It was a basic triangle. A flat leg along the coast (to get used to the bike?), then a mostly uphill leg to the snack stop, and then a mostly downhill leg to the bike place.
I got my helmet and picked out a bike. These were fairly normal mountain bikes. Standard derailleurs, and disc brakes.
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I rode it around the lot a bit to get used to it, and I pulled a “Sam”. I was practicing shifting, and suddenly the bike started making these really horrible grinding noises. It was like nothing that I had ever heard before. I knew that this couldn’t be good, so I stopped and got off the bike. It seemed that I shifted past the largest gear and gotten the chain stuck between the cluster and the spokes. The rear wheel wouldn’t turn, so I picked up the rear of the bike and walked it back to the staff person. He tried fixing it for about 15-30 seconds and then told me to pick out another bike.
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The riding was fine, but there was a large variation in abilities among the guests. I understand why it had to be so, but I found the pace to be much slower than I would have liked. I hated going even slower than that, so whenever the person in front of me was going slower than the person in front of them, so that there was a gap, I would leap frog forward. As a result, I was pretty much always in the front group, usually about 3 or 4 back from the leader. We would periodically stop and wait for the end of the group to catch up and reform as one group.
I was wondering how the uphill would be, but as I expected, I found it rather easy. Others obviously did not, and there were multiple longer stops to wait for the end to catch up.
I understand that this was the way it had to be, but I found the waiting very frustrating. I would have much preferred twice the speed and half the rests. These were not e-bikes, just normal pedal-powered mountain bikes. But in low gear and going at the slow pace that we were going, I had no difficulty with the uphill, although one steeper section did get my heart rate up there.
Initially, I left my pack in the chase car, so I wouldn’t have the extra weight (mostly my “boat anchor” SLR), but after the first stop on the uphill, I retrieved it, so that I would have better access to my phone camera. In hindsight, I should have worn my small fanny pack for my camera.
The flat leg was on a major road, but the other two legs were on back roads (still with occasional traffic). I had been picturing starting near the top of a mountain, and then going down dirt roads through the forest. This was not that. I did appreciate the front suspension. Going over bumps was a lot less jarring than on my road bike.
There were some interesting sights along the way, but there was no realistic way to get a picture while we were riding. Unfortunately, where we stopped, there were no particularly good sights.
We stopped for a “snack” at the halfway point. This was more like the 3/4 way point. In terms of distance, it was the 2/3 point (the second point of the triangle, the highest point). In terms of time, it must have been closer to 3/4 of the way, since the remaining leg was downhill and would be much faster than the uphill leg.
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They gave us a snack/lunch of a small Greek salad and a piece of bread.
As one might imagine, the return leg was easier, faster, and seemed to be very short.
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We got back to the boat around 2, I think. Then we had to go through port security. The pier was fairly long, so they were running a shuttle bus back and forth. I opted to walk because I thought it would be faster, but the bus would have been both easier and faster.
I got up to the room and dumped my stuff around 2:15. The cafe was closing at 2:30, so I hurried up and grabbed a small plate of food for a late lunch.
After lunch, I reapplied sun goop, and then took the shuttle to Corfu town. The town end of the shuttle was at the entrance to the old fort. I paid 10 euro and spent a half hour or more walking around. Mostly, I went up to the top of the hill, where there was a large cross and a lighthouse. I was primarily looking for good views.
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The airport is close by, and I wanted to get a picture of a plane taking off. It isn’t the busiest of airports. I waited for a while, and no planes took off. I got tired of waiting in the sun, so I started heading down. I got about 10 steps down, and I heard the sound of a plane. I rushed back up, but of course, by the time I got up high enough to see the plane, it was already too high in the sky for a picture. I waited a bit longer, but no more planes, so I headed down again
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I wandered a bit more through the old fort, then I left to explore the town of Corfu. I basically screwed up. Not knowing any better, I planned to head away from the fort for a short while, then then to the left and aim for something that looked like a park. I did this, and I found that the area I was walking through was your basic small city and not terribly interesting. Eventually I turned around. I found that if I had turned right, I would have been, I think, in the “old town” or at least a more interesting part of town. I explored it a little, but I didn’t have as much time there as I would have liked.
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I found one store there that had stuffed animals, but they had very few bears, and none came close to interesting me. I did, as I had planned, stop at one place and get some ice cream. I successfully found my way back to the old fort about 5 minutes before the shuttle bus was scheduled. It arrived, as promised, and I rode it back to the pier. We passed by some ornate building, but by the time I got my phone camera out, we were passed it.
I got back on board, got rid of my sweat-soaked clothes, took a shower, and put on my clean evening clothes. I did a little typing, while listening to the pianist and cellist that we liked, then we went to dinner at the “Chef’s Table”.
I think the themes of the restaurants on board are:
World Cafe: Self-serve buffet-style food
The Restaurant: Good food in a restaurant style place
Manfretti’s: A high-end Italian Restaurant
Chef’s Table: A high-end prix-fixe Restaurant with wine pairings
That is, at the Chef’s Table, the menu is what it is, there is no choice involved. There is also a wine pairing with each course. I normally have one glass of wine with dinner (when I have wine). I asked for smaller portions of wine, but with 4 different wines, I must have had at least two full glasses, which is twice as much as I’m used to. I’m definitely feeling it. I can’t imagine what I would be feeling if I had 4 full glasses of wine.
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Strangely enough, halfway through our meal, the people that ended up being seated next to us were ... Meera and David. It is getting almost spooky.
We got back to our room and checked the schedule. Then we made an easy choice. Tomorrow we had a reservation at Manfretti’s, which we weren’t sure about, but we saw that it conflicted with a talk by Russell Lee. Certainly to me, the result was obvious. We canceled the dinner reservation, so that we could catch the talk live. After the talk, we’ll have dinner at The Restaurant.
Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day. It is the one day on the cruise that we won’t be at a port. We will be cruising the Straits of Messina. This will be our chance to check out the pool(s), and for me to do some laundry. Amy already did a bunch of her laundry while I was wandering through Corfu.
In a half hour there is a talk about volcanology that should be interesting. Then tomorrow should be interesting as it will be the first and probably only night that we won’t need to set an alarm to get up on time.
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The talk was OK, but the guy is not nearly as interesting and animated as Russell Lee. Particularly with the wine with dinner, I dozed off in the middle of his talk. At the end, I felt the ship shuddering slightly, and I figured that we were in the process of leaving port. I went up to the bow (Explorer’s Club) to watch the process. We had apparently moved sideways away from the pier by about 50 feet or so. I started a time-lapse of the process. We slowly backed up parallel to the pier until we were clear of it. Then the bow thrusters pushed towards port and the stern propulsors pushed to starboard, and the ship slowly turned in place. After we did about a 180, we proceeded to head out of the harbor. I got some night pictures of the fort as we passed by.
I was a bit thirsty. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of dessert, but for once, I couldn’t find appropriate food on the ship. I went up to the cafe and made some chamomile tea, then went out on the Aquavit Terrace (stern of the ship next to the infinity pool) to drink it.
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I found that it was pretty nice out there. It isn’t too warm or too cool. It isn’t sunny, and there is just enough of a breeze to be interesting. It was really nice and peaceful to just sit there, watching Greece recede, and drink my tea.
I went down to the room, but then I remembered that we got back the hour that we lost last night, so it was only 9:40. That was a bit early to go to bed, particularly as we didn’t need to get up tomorrow morning for an excursion, so I grabbed my laptop, went back up to the terrace, to write up a bit more and enjoy the ambiance.