Next stop Katakolon for Olympia !

Here we are arriving at Katakolon in Greece. I had decided that as we were on our own I would have to rely on my trusty selfie stick ! I have already upgraded it to a blue tooth version which is overall much better, the downside is it does sometimes result in 'unwanted' photos of your armpit and shoes when the trigger is accidentally activated!!! Anyway on this morning we were up on deck when  another passenger decided that we should benefit from her photographic expertise, she simply took over and wanted us to pose in all sorts of ways, we were trying to just get one shot. In the end she took around twenty and only around 3 were not shaky or out of focus!!! The look on Toms face says it all!!!

We disembarked and joined our tour visiting the original site of the Olympics. The weather was a bit of a shock, very hot and the site was very dusty! The tour guide was fabulous and told us loads of interesting facts. We had around two hours visiting the ruins which we really enjoyed. At the end we got back on the bus and he took us to a street of shops so we had a look around and took the coach back to the port. When we arrived back there were huge queues to get back on the ship, I think all of the various tours had ended at around the same time. So we started to queue and while waiting another ship docked and in doing so stirred up the water and the smell was awful. For some reason it was too much for me and I had to go and sit down as I felt a bit light headed. A member of staff noticed I was looking rough and came over and got the pair of us back on the ship. Once I was out of the sun and the smell I felt much better. It was quite scary as I have never had that happen before.  

When we left Venice docked alongside was MSC Musica, we only coincided with them in Greece and didn't seen the ship again until we arrived back in Venice.

The next morning we arrived in a very rainy Izmir in Turkey. Another first for me, never been to Turkey before! It was a complete change of weather from the day before which sort of threw us, we were only planning for sunshine!

When we arrived at the port we were bombarded with street vendors, all of them trying to sell us genuine Marc Jacobs  perfume out of a carrier bag, we tried to get by them but they were ten deep trying to flog us all sorts of 'genuine' goods! Once we finally got free we headed into the town and looked around. At one point we had to stand under an awning as the rain was so heavy.

We did find a lovely Turkish delight shop, we were able to try a few samples while we waited for the rain to pass. It was at this point that my phone suddenly sprung into action and realised that it could find a 3g network so I was swamped with messages. I was hoping that my Bank wasn't going to repeat its trick of two years previously when it decided that I had used my debit card in Italy and that was unusual. The annoying thing is I had taken the trouble to tell the Bank we were travelling!! This time I didn't tell them and they didn't notice!!

The one thing we found a little odd was the packs of dogs that roamed the streets , there were loads of them everywhere we looked. They all seemed to get on OK they didn't interfere with passing pedestrians. In the centre of the town there was a park where the dogs all went for food. Apparently the locals feed them and there is a concerted effort to reduce the numbers, so some of the dogs have ear tags that indicate that they have had the snip.

Tomorrow we do Istanbul!! Have a lovely week. Don't work too hard!!