Onboard the Andrea Cay: Weee're back....

After a whirlwind two week trip back to Annapolis (and North Palm and Denver and Cincinnati), we are very happy to be back on board the Andrea Cay. Meeting us in Aegina when we came back October 10^th, were old friends Howard and Gail Berman (correction: “long-time” friends from our early-married days in San Francisco).

The next day, we traveled back through the Corinth Canal and into the Gulf of Corinth (I promise not to bore you with the same details of our first voyage through the canal chronicled in the “Corinth Canal to Aegina” blog).

We made a brief stop in the quaint little seaside village of Fiskardo on the northern end of the Ionian island of Kefallonia (aka Cephalonia). This was the town where the movie, “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” (Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz) was filmed about 10 years ago.

Our last stop in Greece was the island of Corfu, situated between Italy and the Greek mainland and of such strategic importance that from the mid 1300’s to the mid 1800’s, it was under the rule of Venice, France and then England, until it was finally reclaimed by Greece in 1864.

Unfortunately, we returned to Greece bringing with us a lot of rain, which is quite a change from our near-perfect 2 month visit in August and September. We still managed to get a day and half of sightseeing in though. We hiked to the top of the Old Fortress of Corfu (built in the mid 1500’s by the Venetians) and were rewarded by incredible views of the old city. We explored the old city which is pretty touristy with lots of restaurants and shops along the esplanade and down narrow streets as you work your way back from a lovely city park.

The next day we rented a car and drove around part of the island. Corfu is very hilly, but very lush and green, a real change from the barren and dry Cyclades Islands. There are also beautiful beaches on the west side of the island. The highlight of our day was a visit to the Achilleion Palace, built in 1890 as a personal retreat for the Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Though the palace itself is not overly impressive, the story of the Empress is. Also known as Princess Sissy, she was anything but! A brilliant and educated woman, she was quite the adventurer and sailed around the Mediterranean, visiting Italy, Greece, Spain, France, Africa and Egypt, where according to legend, she would strap herself to the mast in rough seas! When she arrived in port, she would slip off the boat incognito, as her hairdresser masquerading as the Empress would disembark with great ceremony. She met an untimely death when a deranged radical stabbed her.

We had an 18 hour overnight trip to Montenegro last night. It was very windy with thunderstorms and brilliant lightening all night. Fortunately we had a 6-8 ft. “following sea”, which the boat handles very well. Joc and Shaz insisted on taking the overnight shifts, so the rest of us went happily off to bed.