Day 18 - Friday 11th September

We had set our alarms for 4:30am because breakfast was at 5am and the bus was picking us up from the port at 5:30pm.

The bus drove us to the ferry wharf where we boarded the 6am car ferry bound for Killini on the mainland of Greece. The bus drove on board too. I wasn't sure how long the journey would take. It turned out to be not much more than an hour and so we were back on the bus by 7:30. The route took us through Patra, one of the largest towns in Greece, and over the new cable-stayed bridge near Patra.

At about 10:45, we stopped for a rest stop and soon afterwards we stopped for an early lunch at Amfilochia, yet another delightful seaside town. Thanos, the boat's cruise director, paid for everyone's lunch. The target was to catch the 2pm ferry from Igoumenitsa to Corfu and we only just got there on time. For the last part of the journey, the bus driver was going pretty fast to meet the deadline.

Linda, who was sitting near the front of the bus, said that Thanos was making frequent mobile phone calls to someone (probably head office) to check on the route we should take on the bus. At one stage the driver stopped on a freeway to ask a construction worker for directions.

Last weekend we had looked around Corfu town from the land and now we saw it from the sea. The ferry docked by 4pm and the bus drove us up to the top of the hill above Corfu town to a very nice hotel called Divani Corfu Palace. It has views over the airport to the harbour and the hills in the distance.

After unpacking, Suzy's first destination was the hotel pool. She didn't go swimming because the water was too cool but that didn't stop a bunch of noisy drunken Australians. There is a bar near the pool and they had probably been drinking all afternoon. Suzy was rather embarrassed.

Linda later told us that she and her girls had also gone to the pool. They had tried to use a non-Australian accent so nobody would associate them with the rowdy drunks.

We noticed that it was not as hot as when we were in Corfu last weekend. It was at least 5C cooler - mid-20s instead of early 30s.

Before dinner we had a shower. It was good to be able to have a normal shower rather than trying to wash yourself in the equivalent of a confined cupboard that also contained a washbasin, toilet and bin.

Our dinner in the hotel restaurant was to be paid by the cruise operator and so we were waiting for Thanos in the bar outside the restaurant. He hadn't arrived by 8:10 and so I rang him on this mobile. He sounded as though he was half asleep (not too much different from normal) and when he came down to meet us a few minutes later he said that he had indeed fallen asleep.

It was a very nice buffet dinner with about 16 people who had been on the boat. At the end of dinner there were hugs, kisses and a few tears as we wouldn't be seeing some of them again tomorrow.