Day 7: At Sea & Day 8: Navplion & Ancient Corinth (Greece)

We enjoyed sleeping in on our days at sea. We usually had to be at the Vista Lounge between 7-8am to catch our excursions.... so a break from that was nice. There were a variety of activities planned on the ship to fill your day at sea. One of our favorites was to watch competitions at the pool..... such as "who could make the biggest splash".... "who could fit as many plastic vegetables in their bathingsuit in a minute"..... "which team could pass an orange under their chins w/out using their hands, the fastest" .... and so on. (In case you chuckled over this... no.... I didn't enjoy it to see the guys in their swimsuits! Besides... they were too young.) Another favorite of ours was playing cards. We decided to play the game of "Golf," which is a game where it's every man for himself. In other words.... no team playing. If you know my dad.... you know how competitive he can get... so we figured it would be best to not play on teams. Mom and I (much to the dislike of our husbands) loved shopping on the ship. They had lots of beautiful jewelry to look at and other various goodies from each of the countries we visited. There was also a small movie theater with huge comfy over-sized leather chairs and popcorn to munch on. We watched only 2 movies in there on the whole trip..... "The Bucket List" & "The Spiderwick Chronicles." We also rented 2 movies to watch in our rooms. So... in case any of you were wondering.... there is plenty to do on days at sea.

On our sailing from Messina to Navplion... we passed by Stromboli, Greece. Dad got up early while the rest of us slept in and took some nice pictures. Here are a few.
As you can see, Stromboli has an active volcano. Not too many people live on this island.




Dad liked the rock that jetted out on the right... thought it looked like the head of an animal.



Day 8~

We arrived at the port city, Navplion and had to tender in to the shore. They used the lifeboats from our ship to take us to shore. Robert thought it was to make people feel better about using the lifeboats if there was ever an emergency.









We then boarded our tour bus to head to the canal. The Corinth Canal connects the Ionian and Aegean Seas.




Next, we headed to Ancient Corinth and were pretty excited! I tried to imagine Paul speaking to the Corinthians as we were walking about the ruins.

Mom and I











At the end of our tour in Ancient Corinth, there was a museum of items uncovered on the site. One thing I found interesting was the statues. Notice they are missing heads? Robert and I thought an enemy must've done this to the statues, but we were wrong. They are made headless on purpose, to where you can exchange heads.... so whoever became the new ruler, could place his modeled head on a statue.... or a god or senator, etc. They wouldn't let us put Robert's head on one. Oh well.



Some of the interchangeable heads







When we got back to Navplion we strolled down the streets for some great shopping. As we were walking a man beckoned us onto the patio of his restaurant where we ate lunch. We had the BEST Greek salad I've ever had!!! It was totally amazing... we all agreed. We've tried copying it, but just can't seem to reproduce it just yet.














A view of the sea as we tendered back to the Zuiderdam.