Rhapsody of the seas Greek Islands live(ish) blog!

[Cruisingcouple22]

16 hours ago, little britain said:

Hi, how much are they charging for Surf wifi on board please? There is a deal for £7.89pd in the precruise planner.  

Also how are the specialty restaurants - full or not?  They want over £25 for Giovannis in the planner which I think is a little excessive!

Going on her in a few weeks so interesting to see what you think and how the weather is!!!

TIA.

 

I think the surf WiFi is about 14 USD a day, so the £7.89 sounds like a deal. They have a mid cruise offer at the minute for $48 for the last 3 days, so about 16 a day. It drops to $40 with our c&a discount so if you can wait till half way you can get a deal

 

we only went in the speciality restaurants on the first two nights with our BOGO offer. Izumi on the first night and only 3 other tables, and chips on the 2nd was about half full. We’ve seen a couple of offers for 20% off if you eat between 6 and 6:30. I’m not sure how much Giovanni table normally is, I’ll see if I can find it’s price on board. 

 

And so so far the weather has been brilliant. About 20 degrees Celsius each day, no rain and only a little wind! Hope it’s the same for you in a couple of weeks 

[Cruisingcouple22]

15 hours ago, ptod said:

Not sure if my favorite photo so far has been the sunrise, drink in the hot tub or all the sleeping cats.  All look great!

 

How early can you steam and sauna in the morning?

 

If you happen to catch any karaoke sessions, could you note the catalog versions or just take a photo of the books?  Taking 6 newbies on the Rhapsody NYE cruise and they all want to sing their hearts out.  TIA

 

....and now we return to the adventure already in progress...... have a great time!

I know, there are so many cats! But sunrises are beautiful too 😀

The sauna and steam are open between 8am and 10pm each day, so plenty of time for warming up! 

Havent caught a karaoke session yet but will take a photo if I do. I’d love to do a New Years cruise, something we may have to look into!

[Cruisingcouple22]

After that we wandered back to the ship. An afternoon spent relaxing in the solarium and playing some cards and we were ready for dinner. Tonight was our first night in the main dining room. Service was very quick, we didn’t need to wait for a table at 8pm. Our wait staff were lovely and the food was very nice, although my almond crusted cod was a little dry. The beef tenderloin was cooked perfectly and the creme brûlée was perfect. 

Tonight’s show was a magician called Jaime Raven, who was runner up on Britain’s got talent one year. He was very entertaining, pulling off some good tricks and was very funny with it. I recommend catching him if he is on your ship. We bumped into him the next morning getting off the ship and he looked like he had enjoyed a very good time in the bar after his show! 

Then it was bed time yet again! This cruise is going very fast, although I am enjoying the slower pace of the smaller ship more than I though I would. See you all tomorrow!

sunset view from our room

and I love these things! Haven’t seen one it years

[ptod]

Thanks for the info on the sauna/steam.

 

It is terribly unfair that the weeks before the cruise can seem to drag on forever, but the week on the cruise goes by too fast.  

 

Enjoy the rest of your trip - thanks for the review.

[little britain]

8 hours ago, Cruisingcouple22 said:

 

I think the surf WiFi is about 14 USD a day, so the £7.89 sounds like a deal. They have a mid cruise offer at the minute for $48 for the last 3 days, so about 16 a day. It drops to $40 with our c&a discount so if you can wait till half way you can get a deal

 

we only went in the speciality restaurants on the first two nights with our BOGO offer. Izumi on the first night and only 3 other tables, and chips on the 2nd was about half full. We’ve seen a couple of offers for 20% off if you eat between 6 and 6:30. I’m not sure how much Giovanni table normally is, I’ll see if I can find it’s price on board. 

 

And so so far the weather has been brilliant. About 20 degrees Celsius each day, no rain and only a little wind! Hope it’s the same for you in a couple of weeks 

Thanks so much. Our first 3 days are in port so I was thinking of getting it on day 4 so $48 would be good! My D+ discount would take that down to about $3 for the remaining days!  I think I can afford that!

Edited November 7, 2018 by little britain

[Cruisingcouple22]

Day 4 Athens 

One thing that I’ve quite like about this cruise is the late arrival to some of the ports. I was a bit worried that it would mean we didn’t get enough time in places, but the lie ins have been wonderful! We took fill advantage of that this morning as we weren’t due in until 12:00. The ship was actually docked and cleared in Piraeus by 11:45 though. We had an excursion booked through cruising excursion .com which didn’t meet until 12:45 so had plenty of time to spare. Our trip was going to take us on a driving tour of Athens with stops at the Acropolis and Plaka. We had to get to Athens first and it was about a 45 minute drive, with a lot of that time spent in stop start traffic around the port. We also had a short stop at the stadium for the first modern Olympic Games. This is a huge 60000 seater made entirely out of marble.

Whilst driving around we got to see a number of the sites including temple of Zeus, parliament and a number of hospitals, museums and universities.

Our guide was very knowledgeable and made the trip very enjoyable. He told us that Greece’s population is about 11.5 million, one of the lowest densities in Europe, but 4 million people live in Piraeus and Athens. Also 17.2% of Greece’s men are name George or similar after St. George! 

We spent about 1hr 30min at the Acropolis with our tour guide and he gave us a great tour and some free time on top as well. The walk up isn’t too strenuous but the steps are made out of marble and some are angled so very slippery! The views from on top are stunning though and well worth it.

 If you look very carefully you can just make out Rhapsody through the smog!

It’s incredible to think these structures have been here for 2000 years.

 a bit of scaffolding to help with the repairs

After we came back down we finished our tour of Athens by coach and were dropped off outside of Zeus’s temple and given about 1hr 45min if free time. We spent this wandering through the streets, looking in the shops and having a bite to eat. The tzatziki was fantastic and not like anything I had tried in England, and the fried feta cheese with honey was incredible! I hope I can find somewhere that does in local to me! The acropolis is lit up beautifully at night, but it is hard to get a photo as you are so close to it!

Then it was back to the ship. The traffic on the way back was much lighter and it only took us about 20 minutes.

We thanked our driver and tour guide before having a nice relaxing dinner in the windjammer. Then we caught a bit of the pure country show, the singers have very good voices but some of the songs they sung were not right for them. The sets and dancers were good though. Then I went for a bit of rock climbing under the stars, it was really fun to be at the top of the wall and look around the dark ocean. And then it was off to bed for the early start in Mykonos tomorrow (7am!)

[mar915]

I don't know if you are diamond members, but does anyone know the diamond lounge cocktail items time?

[little britain]

Did you take a bottle of wine into MDR or specialty... and if so, did they bother charging you corkage?

[Cruisingcouple22]

Sorry, not sure about the diamond cocktail times or restaurant corckage fees

[Cruisingcouple22]

Day 5 Mykonos 

Today was an early morning! The ship was ready to start her tenders at 7am, but we didn’t catch one until about 8 as we figured there wouldn’t be much open before then, and the ferry to Delos we were planning on catching wasn’t leaving until 10. It was a short 5 minute tender but the waters were quite choppy. It was a very scenic trip though coming into Mykonos harbour. We spent a little time wandering the streets of the island, saw another hundred or so cats and a number of face offs between cars in the streets (and even one mini dump truck). The streets are really beautiful here and you could spend a long time just wandering around. We heard an interesting fact that the reason so many houses on this side of Greece are blue and white is because when the were ruled by the Ottoman Turks there were not allowed to fly their national flag, so they painted there houses those colours instead! Ingenious way to get around that proscription! 

We took Delostours ferry over to the smaller island and had booked the tour guide too. This came to 50 euros per person, the ferry on its own was 20 then 6 euros entry fee if you want to do it on your own. This route was very choppy! The ship pitched quite a bit at times but we made it there safe and sound. It was about a 25 minute trip though, so if you don’t deal well with rough seas make sure you take a sea sickness tablet or similar. The island itself was very interesting. It’s been inhabited in some form for at least the last 2500 years and is said to have been the birthplace of the gods Apollo and Artemis. This is where the island gets its name, as Poseidon pulled it from the seas it became visible (dilos in Ancient Greek) Our guide showed us round the island for just under 2 hours and did a good job. Again as expected there are cats on the island, and some of them follow the tour guide around as she feeds them, it’s very cute.

Some of the building are well preserved and you can see the mosaics still on the walls and floors. One house even still had some intact frescoes. Other buildings, especially the larger ones are just foundations. There was one stone that weighed over 11 tonnes! How they managed to move this I don’t know! There is a museum on the island which houses the Delos lions that are left along with some other statues and is included in the price of admission. There is also a tall hill you can climb up that gives views over the entire island and back to Mykonos, worth the climb but make sure you give yourself plenty of time, we were running out in order the catch the only ferry back(!) so had to move pretty quickly to make it. Most of the paths are pretty good but there are a number of steps and uneven sections to be aware if. The ferry ride back was even more rocky and a number of people had to make use of the provided bags unfortunately. There was a member of crew standing at the ready to dispense them at all times, but I just think he was there to have a chuckle at the foolish tourists 😀 Once back on shore we had another wander around the streets, as this was the very last day of the season there were some deep discounts in the shops with most slashing 50% off. This did mean a lot of shops were shut altogether though.

[JohninDC]

On ‎11‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 2:53 AM, little britain said:

Did you take a bottle of wine into MDR or specialty... and if so, did they bother charging you corkage?

We cruised Rhapsody in June and were not charged the corkage fee in the MDR for either of our bottles - I tipped our waiter appropriately!