Saturday - Sail in and afternoon in Corfu, Greece
We took the Captain's offer seriously yesterday and without additional permission or advance notice we strolled past the "Restricted Area" signs onto the Navigation Bridge in the front of the 8th floor of the boat. (See, I am qualified with all that boat talk stuff.) Instead of calling Security, Captain Luigi (his preferred address, really) welcomed us quite warming. The high resolution radar and Chart Pilot integrated navigation/con system are very impressive. All ships' tracks are predicted, possible conflicts with other vessels are indicated, and deviation from the preplanned route is pointed out. The officers on duty go about changing settings, saying "hum" frequently, and quietly answering phone and radio calls as the Captain and Greek pilot have a friendly discussion in Italian which seemed to include lots of technical details regarding our approach and docking as well as restaurant advice. Probably without need I didn't take any photos of the bridge out of respect and fear for the Gerka security officers who were probably practicing for an assault and recovery operation after they reviewed the videos from the security cameras. The most remarkable things about our couple of hours observing the Bridge operations from calling and picking up the local Pilot through docking at Corfu were that the Bridge is very quiet throughout the entire operation, the half dozen personnel on the Bridge work quite independently and competently at their respective jobs, and that the Captain says exactly the same phrases as Captain Kirk. We heard, "Captain has the Con", quiet commands of "Left 5 degrees", and even, "Hard to Starboard". Everything except, "I need warp 8". Also, a dozen or so unseen officers and crew did their jobs of line handing, mooring, observations and reporting ("Port Stern is 100 feet clear of jetty"), etc., without being summoned or otherwise commanded. That is, everyone was where they needed to be and when they needed to be there. It was very cool.
Corfu, Greece
We took the first shuttle into this World Heritage Site town on the north end of the long island of Corfu. The island actually extends north of the Albanian border on the mainland. So this is very northern Greece. Corfu Town has two forts, picturesque back alleys, a restored synagogue, and a few very touristy streets full of shops selling lemoncello and kumquat liquor. Lots of kumquat stuff, a whole lot. Also anatomically correct bottle openers, bottles of kumquat liquor, and just outright dildos made from various materials. (I didn't ask why.) A small harbor, actually in the moat of the "new" fort, is one of the few places to have the strange phenomenon of small boats hovering mid-air.
We returned to the ship and rested up as Barbara worked on her blog (http://barbara-med1106.blogspot.com) and I checked out the ship's pool on the TV on my favorite channel. (This avoids the 2 minute trip to the pool if the two small kids on this voyage are even approaching the pool deck.) After our usual aperitif we had the ribeye steaks "under the stars" on deck and then sailed out at 11 pm, happy to leave the less stable countries of the Middle East and Greece. Now we are back in politically stable, uncorrupted, and secure Western Europe where the population has faith in their leaders as we are few miles east off the coast of southern Italy. Hey, wait!
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