Zakynthos - Greece

We are on to day 9 of our cruise and we were headed to Greece.  They came up with an excursion while on the boat that sounded interesting to us.  It was the Blue Caves, so we decided to try it and see how it was.  Here we couldn't dock at the island, so we had to take the lifeboats into Greece.

 

Here are the boys heading down to the lifeboats.  They thought it was really cool!!

 

The island is not very big at all.  It has a population of about 39,000 people on it.  It is only 24 miles long by 12 miles wide.  It only takes about an hour to drive across the whole island and only that long because of the winding small roads.  Here is David at the top of their "mountain" 756 m tall.

 

They had a few of these around - I think they are very interesting!

 

The boys at the cove where we were getting ready to get on the boat.  Check out the color of the water behind them!

 

There were caves like this all along the coast - it was amazing how the water and wind has hollowed it out.   

 

 

Here the boat driver actually backed into the cave to show us this beautiful water.  It is so clear that you could see all the way to the bottom really easily.

 

This was an underwater garden.  There were so many colors and different entities down there, I am not sure what they all are called.

 

Here you can see the different colors in the water.

 

So our tour guide was awesome!!  He was funny, interesting, had lots of great facts and he let the boys ride on the front of the boat.  It is a closed bow and he lifted them up and over the steering wheel to sit up front.  They thought that was FANTASTIC!!!  They were very excited about that!!!  Here he is giving them a private talk about the cave and the water.  He really was a great guy!!! 

 

 

This cave is called Cave of Papa.  The story goes that a priest was fishing and a young girl was swimming.  The priest went to flirt with her and he drowned.

 

You can see here the color of the water reflecting on top of the ceiling in the cave.  It was great that he backed us into more than one cave to show us.  We saw other boats that were just driving by because they didn't have as great a driver as us!

 

I just thought this showed the beautiful landscape of Greece.  Both David and I said if we wanted to go on a nice and relaxing vacation to sit by the beach this would be the beach.  It is so quiet and quaint.

 

This is the most famous of blue caves.  It is the one that is pictured in all the magazines, etc.

 

 

And of course - we had to find an ice cream store

 

Michael was very excited - he was able to hold the lollipop as Kathy called it.  It was what they used to help us keep track of our guides in busy places.  He was the helper for the afternoon!

 

This was an olive tree.  They have over 2 million olive trees on this island and yes that is 2 million!  Some are over 2000 years old.  There is a story that is quite long about them, but it ends as a wish of two elderly people to die at the exact same time.  And the god granted this wish and on the day that they died was the day the first olive tree grew and they say if you look close you can see the man and woman entwined together in the tree.

 

Every island has a saint, Saint Dennis is the saint of this island and this is his church.  In the big earthquake of 1953 only three things survived, two churches and one bank.  Everything else was demolished on the island.

 

When we got back we wanted to go into town, so we decided to take a horse and buggy into town!!  The boys loved it especially since they didn't have to walk!

 

David enjoying his Greek beer!!

 

So David wanted to have a gyro in Greece.  He asked the lady at the first place we stopped at after the blue caves tour and she had no idea what he was talking about.  Well he asked our tour guide and she said they call them pita, pita.  So he asked for one of those and received it!!  And it was really, really yummy!

 

And well, we had ice cream twice in Greece because the first wasn't the "good" ice cream  LOL

 

 

The view of the bay - I still can't get over how beautiful it was there and really peaceful!!!

 

The boys on the lifeboat on the way back to our boat.

 

 

That night the show was the Michael Jackson Experience.  I think this was our favorite of all the shows. 

 

The one they had play him did a pretty good job - he didn't know all the songs to lip-sync, but he had his moves down really well!!!

 

AJ liked it until they came to Thriller, he didn't like all the zombies as it scared him a little.  David warned Michael and said they were fake and Michael was like "I know that Dad" 

 

Kathy was at the end of the show and caught us afterward and she hadn't eaten dinner yet so she joined us!!  It was great fun!!!  As you can see the boys loved her!!!  She called them Monkey 1 and Monkey 2.  She cracked us up!!!