Greece and Turkey - Part 1

I have looked through my photographs and there are rather a  lot so I shall just add a few and perhaps show you my travel journal/ scrapbook that I made during the week and just completing now we are at home.

The above is the sunset in Corfu as we are waiting to leave as passengers turn up in stages during the day otherwise there would be chaos if everyone turned up at the same time.

Here is Sophie and I took a similar picture in the same spot last year.  Due to problems with our first holiday booking coming on this cruise with Thomson Majesty was a last minute booking, we had no intention of coming on the same boat two years running.  Grown up sooooo much!

We decided to book an inside cabin as it is much darker and a bit quieter first thing in the morning and to be honest we do not spend that much time in it anyway.

Saturday is a day at sea and I had already read two books by this time during the summer holidays at my sister in law's which is unheard of.  It usually takes me ages to read just one so it was great to start my third which was a freebie on my Kindle plus some word searches which I love doing.  A very lazy and relaxing day and Sophie spent most of it in the pool where she made a friend called Becky.  We also signed her up for the Kids Club this time and in the afternoon she popped along.

Unfortunately she was not very impressed at all and it may have been because she was the eldest at 11 and they did not seem to do very much during the two hours she was there, never mind.

Unfortunately that evening Sophie became quite ill and due to being on a boat we had to stay in our cabin for 24 hours and then be given the all clear by the Ships Doctor who was very god with Sophie.  This has never happened before on any holiday and we had only just got there plus we even took and used  extra hand sanitiser with us.  But if you look around you when on holiday just people watch.  How many sneeze over the buffet?  Cough into their hands and then touch a door handle or serving spoon you then also pick up?  Same applies to menus in restaurants, hand rails and so on.  Now I know that you could easily get paranoid and you can not live like that but when you have been up with your daughter for 6 hours during the night and watched her vomit like she was you do sort of get a little irritated when basic hygiene and common sense are not observed  by others especially when there is a lot of people staying in one place such as a hotel or boat and sanitiser is available and not always being used.  Please do not be put off in any way but it is the same with anything, you do not notice until something happens which makes you look at a situation differently.

Anyway, after room service and thank goodness we put several films on hubby's ipad plus books and drawing we were given the all clear with a few guidelines on what to do.  Avoid the buffet which is hard as that is all that was available for lunch so we had to skip that meal and it took Sophie several days to fully recover which was harder in the heat as well.  Hubby and I felt totally ok and this is often the case which I did not know.

So we missed Crete which was our first stop and with no window we could not even look out at it.

Our next stop was Bodrum in Turkey.

This was extremely hot and poor Sophie struggled so we only managed a couple of hours.

We did buy some ceramic plates to go with our collection from our travels.  Rather than buying tourist rubbish, we try to find a street artist or bring back a plate to hang on the wall in the kitchen.

The shop we went in to had so many to choose from it was quite hard to decide.  I did the same when we went to Spain last month and everyone was convinced that the three plates I had would be broken when I got home, but they are all fine and waiting to go on the wall.

We all liked this design and thought it looked very Turkish.

The port of Bodrum has quite a mix of boats and hubby enjoyed seeing what he could spot and where they had come from.  Bus man's holiday for him but that is what he enjoys which became his job.

The little beach that there was did not have any sand but what look like fine coarse shingle/slate bits but there were loads of sofas and chairs outside which you would not dream of doing in the UK due to the rainfall        ( had some this morning now it is bright sunshine and about 26 degrees!)

We had a drink in a street cafe which was freshly squeezed orange juice and then we made our way to the local museum but we could see that Sophie had had enough so we headed back to the ship for some quiet time before she headed off to "Stage School" which she had signed up for and felt she could have a go at.  We lounged on one of the decks on the shady side of the ship and read some more while Sophie was at her workshop.  It did the trick and she was really perky when she came back and then she settled on a sun lounger and snoozed for an hour or so.

Every evening there is a music show of some kind and Sophie wanted to go seeing as she had spent part of the afternoon with some of the entertainment department and when there was a chance to take photos with them after the show Sophie practically floated when they called out her name to come up on stage for a picture!

So that was our first (second for everyone else) day and things got off to a bad start but were showing signs of getting better.  A good nights sleep was had by Sophie which was good after the previous couple of days and a little bit of cheeky humour showed us that the old Sophie was on her way back.

xx