Elba

We ordered tea and coffee to be brought to our cabin this morning - insurance policy to ensure we were up in good time for our tour this morning. We needn’t have worried as we were woken up to the sound of tenders being lowered!  Callum thought it was fantastic that they bought Breakfast to our cabin. There was even two pineapple juices for Daddy and Callum and an apple juice for Mummy. He now wants to have breakfast this way every morning!

We could see the weather was overcast when we stepped out onto the balcony. Cloud was shrouding the top of the hills and we have views of very pretty little inlets. We wandered down onto the Prom Deck to see what the view was from the other side, and the town certainly had the WOW factor. Really pretty little harbour with a huge wall built around the headland with fortifications. Houses were once again that yellowy-orange colour with terracotta tiles.

We had to meet in Carmen's at 8.15am as our "Footsteps of Napoleon" tour was the first to go ashore. We met out guide for the walking tour, Lucia and she was great. We walked from the harbour through the old city walls built by Medici. We first tried to visit the theatre ... I say tried as when we arrived, the theatre was all locked up! She was not overly impressed and said that the Elbans had a "Domaine" attitude to life! We were able to admire the views as we had climbed up a little way. Someone eventually opened and we were all very glad she waited.

It was a very small theatre - only about 200 seats. Half were in the stalls, and the rest were in small boxes built around the edge. 16 boxes, three stories high. The safety curtain had an old "Masterpiece" painted on it. It was a stunning theatre.

Next we walked a little further up and visited Napoleon's main Residence during his exile on Elba. after this we walked up into the top of the fortress which had fab views of the ship in the harbour and over the town. Afterwards we wandered back down into the town, grabbed a coffee and a couple of postcards and then headed back to the ship.

Callum couldn't wait to get back into Toy Box and play with his new buddies. It was funny food day so dreaded to think what they'd all get up to! We arrived back a little later to take him to kids tea, and they'd been making sandwiches (Callum's was packed with ham, cheese, carrot and cucumber sticks and a smear of Marmite added to the top for good measure!). They'd also made pasta necklaces too.

There was a very special guest at Kids Tea tonight. Mr Bump was visiting! Tom the Magician was also helping out making yet more balloon things. This time Callum went for an alien. The ghost and the fish were really cool though.

Quiz night again followed and there were a lot more teams entering. We were starting off with a -2 point deduction, but we did OK. We ended up only getting 3 questions wrong ... and the team that won scored an impressive 18 points. One of the teams got a bit stroppy with the quiz master and told her she had two questions wrong. As everyone else had got these questions right, he wasn't going to win that one! At least we can start the quiz afresh tomorrow without any points deduction.

Callum had had a great time in Toy Box though. They had ice cream sundaes and a slumber party ... only the third lot of ice cream today. Judging by the state of his clothes, he'd opted for chocolate sauce too instead of his usual choice of strawberry!!