Corfu, Greece (and SOMEBODY'S birthday)

The day may have belonged to Greyson but the morning was all Quinn's.

We started the day taking a tour of Corfu's Achilleion Palace. The Palace was built by the Austrian Princess Elizabeth whose life itself could be a Greek tragedy. Her drama filled life started when she accompanied her sister on a trip to Bavaria where her sister was to be introduced to her future husband, instead it was Elizabeth who snatched the King's attraction leaving a bitter rift between her and her family for the rest of her life. Apparently, the husband stealing also caused a row between her and her mother-in-law her relentlessly tortured her throughout her life. Then against the advice of her doctors she took her small girls on holiday to Hungary and one of them died on the trip. Now alienated by her husband as well she fled to Corfu Greece where she built the Achilleion Palace as an homage to all the Greek Gods, but especially Achilles whom she felt was a kindred spirit. Her luck did not improve in Greece as soon after her son was killed in an apparent murder-suicide pact with his lover. She spent the rest of her life in isolation until she was assassinated.

Now of course all Quinn got from this story was "Princess, are we really going to go to a real Palace where a real Princess lived??" She was hooked. She danced through that Palace telling me everything the Princess did. "This is where the Princess danced. This is where the Princess took a bath. This is where the Princes slept." You get the general idea.

The Palace was everything you would have imagined a Palace to be, and frankly if I had to live in exile from my husband and mother-in-law this would be the place I would go.

This is where the Princess walked up the stairs!!

Hard to see but that is Greyson peering down from the top of the stairs. He was less enthralled with the Palace.

Little Greyson, big Achilles.

Yet another statue of Achilles.

The Princess and the Queen Mother

The garden was filled with statues of all the Greek muses so we spent some time being muses ourselves....

Quinn as the muse of dance

The muses of comedy

Raif and I (along with Greyson's thumb) with the muse of love and marriage.

The other drama of the day, aside from the tragedy of Princess Elizabeth was that the taxicab drivers in Corfu were on strike. Apparently they were upset about the EU imposing their own taxicab laws on Corfu (I don't quite understand why the EU would be interested in such things so there is probably more to the story then we were told). In any event, the taxi drivers had initially expressed their anger by blocking all the tourists (including cruise ships) from coming onto the island. Well, that pissed off a lot of locals who made their livelihood off tourists like us so thankfully the day we arrived they switched their tactics to blocking the ticket booths of all the major Corfu tourist attractions thereby letting everyone in for free. Here is the sign they posted at Achilleion Palace:

After our royal adventures we headed out to a private villa on Corfu Coast where we had an amazing home cooked authentic Greek lunch. Both Raif and I spoke with the lady who owned the house who said she invited people in her home like this because she loved to cook and loved to have company, now I am sure that the cash that we shelled out for the lunch didn't hurt her desire to house guests. The food was amazing - Moussaka, meatballs, taziki and pita, chicken kebabs, baklava and this amazing pomegranate liquor (I could go on but I am getting hungry). (And I will also say that as tasty as all this food was, the Turkish versions of these dishes are far superior!! ;))

When the owner of the villa found out it was Greyson's birthday she made a makeshift birthday cake for him out of Toblerone, had traditional dancers sing and dance for him and even gave him a little evil eye key ring with a G on it.


She was also kind enough to give us a tour of the house and let the kids pose with her Olympic torch from the 2000 Olympic games in Athens.


After that we spent some time swimming in her pool.


(Not a bad view huh? Amazing pool, amazing scenery, though the perfection of the day was taken away a smidge by the fact that outside of the Erim clan I think everyone else in the pool was on a daily Geritol supplement if you get my meaning)

Once back on the ship we celebrated Greyson's birthday again with a cake at dinner and Happy Birthday sung in Indonesian by the entire dining room.


He even got some origami soldiers made by a few of his favorite wait staff.


All in all not a bad way to spend a birthday. Though Quinn is already asking in what country she will be turning 6. We may have started a dangerous trend.