Royal Caribbean Rhapsody of the Seas - Day Three Corfu

[Dinglebert]

Finally I have scanned in the Cruise Compasses for the trip and as soon as I end up back of the same PC I did the scanning to I will upload to each day.


Anyway Day Three which was Corfu. I knew that the port at Corfu was some distance from Corfu town and the thought was we would just go off the ship and spend time around the dock area as we have been to Corfu on holiday before and spent the day in Coful town and didn't really feel the need to go back for any reason. That plan lasted 10 minutes.

Breakfast was again in the Windjammer. Its difficult to describe the choices other than to say whatever you thought you could have for breakfast they had it in abundance along with food that you struggle to think anyone would ever eat first thing in the morning. The boys eventually joined us. It took a day to click that I could phone them from cabin to cabin. The internal phone also had an alarm function which worked nicely. Of course the cabin being pitch black and my inability to see in the dark meant that sometimes it took too long to fumble for light switch to get to the phone in time to pick it up. That meant that five mintues later it would ring again. I will not go into what I was doing five minutes after I get up but the unexpected shock was not good.

The ship docked today at the harbour. We were now experienced and took only our sea passes leaving the passports in the room safe. The safe you will be pleased to know is free. Its a personal thing I know but I used to hate to have to pay to use safes in holiday hotels in the days we used to go to holiday hotels.

Off the boat was either a 10 minute walk to the customs hall or wait for a coach. We choose the walk only to be beaten by the bus arriving just before us. Getting into Corfu was simple. We then had to run the daily gauntlet of people wanting to take us places. There appears to be a bit of a heirarchy in these things. The official guides were first in the pecking order but they were waiting for pre-booked guests. Next were the Taxi drivers all of whom were insistent they were the best. I found the no eye-contact, polite no thanks and keep walking worked best. Then came the hop on - hop off bus people. Their sales people tended to be far younger than the taxi drivers and all again informing us that their hop on hop off bus was far better than the next hop on hop off bus. They did seem to work on colours however but that wasn't straight forward. To my memory there were three different companies, the yellow, blue and red bus companies. Clearly they weren't actually called that but the colours of the bus were either yellow, blue or red. However their leaflets were of course in a different colour to the bus but often in the same colour as a rivals bus. Hence the red bus company had blue leaflets. Somewhat confusing.

Anyway we stroud past them aiming for the exit of the docks which frankly was further away than I wanted it to be. We finally got to the exit to understand that basically there is nothing there. There was no way we would be spending any length of time hanging around the dock area of Corfu. So it was back to actually buy one of the hop on hop off buses. I think they had forgotten we had walked past because not one said "told you so" or laughed in our faces at all. We chose blue. No idea why other than they told us a bus would be past every 15 minutes. I had developed a new fear. The fear of missing the ship. These ships will leave without passengers. There are some not very funny videos on you-tube of just that and some precautionery blogs from people who did just that. Missing the ship without a passport would have added to the fun.

Anyway 22 euros later which frankly for four of us I thought a really good deal off we went. Corfu town or what we saw of it was just as I remember. Hot and of course with streets that were never designed for coaches to go down if anything was coming the other way. We had been given headphones to listen to the English commentary. Not suprisingly the headphones were absolute rubbish but no matter. We got off about half way through and stopped off at a cafe right by the sea. There we came across the age old tradition of what old Greek people do each day. They stand in the sea with their hats on up to their waist and talk. There were around 50 of them standing in small groups or on their own just passing the time of day. We say the same thing on other islands later in the trip. Its as if the old age day centres had decanted to the sea for the day.

The cafe gave us a wake-up however to the cost of Corfu. For a bottle of water, two cokes and a coffee in the cafe it came to 23 euros. I was somewhat taken aback, however, the prices were consistently high in Mykonos and Kefalonia was well. I know there is cruise boat inflation in towns when the boats are in. Indeed in Mykonos a hat two minutes from the dock was 18 euros where it was only 9 just five minutes into the town. However, this cafe was nowhere near the ship. We found similar prices elsewhere. While I am sure the holidays resorts will be cheaper I was very glad we hadn't decided to go self catering to Greece this year. It would have cost a fortune.

Anyway tour over we were back on the ship. As we got off the bus one of the sellers came over and said that they also do trips in Athens and indeed she was going their tonight on the ferry and would see us tomorrow. She gave us an Athens leaflet and wrote that we could get the hop on tomorrow for 38 euros for the four of us. This was great as we didn't know how we were going to get to the parthanon tomorrow as the cheapest RCI excursion was $49 each for a bus tour which didn't include parthanon entry.

The rest of the day is a bit of a blur, or was its otherwise known much the same as the day before. On getting back, got into my swimming stuff and went up top. The ship was still quiet as people were still ashore. A caribbean stype band were playing who were great. I ordered a cocktail of the day and read my book. Decided to go for a swim in the pool. The pool is small but very deep. I hadn't worked out the 20 yards from my deckchair to the pool was going to be such an ordeal however. Having taken off my sandels I walked towards the pool. The deck was absolutely boiling hot and burning my feet. However, I was nearly half way there before the pain really kicked in. Its difficult to try to remain dignified and pretend nothing is wrong while at the same time trying to speed up to get anywhere. I couldn't go back so instead I aimed for a puddle which must had come from the jacussis. That helped briefly before I made it to the pool area. While in the pool I plotted my way back to hit as much shaded areas as possible.

Meal was in the maining dining as usual, followed by the show and the then the movie outdoors.

Show tonight was by Graffiti Classics who are British Four piece classical quartet. Very funny.

Good day overall.

[Cutiepie]

Lovely day... How did you find the evening entertainment? How was the food in the dining room? Did you have my time dining or a set time? I'm just trying to decide which would be better.

Thanks

[Dinglebert]

Originally Posted by Cutiepie

Lovely day... How did you find the evening entertainment? How was the food in the dining room? Did you have my time dining or a set time? I'm just trying to decide which would be better.

Thanks

See more...

I was going to add a bit each day about the entertainment, however until I sit at the same PC as the cruise compass is stored I can't remember which show was which evening. In the main the visiting acts tended to be good to very good and the "ships shows" were a mixture of good and bad bits.

The live music on the ship however was excellent all round. We did My Time dining as when we booked that was all that was left. As it turned out that did mean in reality we ate at rougly the same time each night. In part that was our choice. We wanted the same waiting staff and table. They were excellent and made the meals enjoyable. With two teenagers we found having a table to ourselves better rather than having to particpate in say in conversations at a larger table. We did have one meal without the kids after a tour of the galley where we shared a table with others which we found perfectly OK. Not too sure the teenagers would have enjoyed it each evening. The other advantage was that service for us was quick. While I'm can't say it would have been slow given everyone at set times arrives to eat at the same time, we did find with the meal with dine with others the service was far slower.

[Cutiepie]

Thank you for the reply.. I think that we would prefer a table of our own so maybe my time dining would be better for us. We have only cruised with Disney before so I'm finding looking at other lines a minefield we have finally picked the cruise we are going to do, just getting some quotes now from different travel agents which again I'm finding strange as I haven't used a travel agent for anything since about 2001! I always book everything myself.

Looking forward to reading more & seeing the cruise compass when you get them uploaded

[JudeB]

Enjoying reading your report. We cruised on Rhapsody in Oct 15 and we loved it. We did 10 day Greek Islands and Italy cruise. We'd never cruised before so didn't know what to expect. We loved it and hope to do another one some day.