Regent Seven Seas Explorer Athens to Istanbul Full Travelogue

[forgap]

That’s the thing about art - some pieces speak to the heart, some to the brain, and some to the intestines!  I rather liked Frank del Rio’s championing of South American artists.   I have my favorite pieces on each ship as well as my “worst in show” choices.  Bottom line, though, they always catch my attention.  
 

We just returned from a cruise on the Silversea Whisper.   The art throughout the ship was monochromatic to the level of wallpaper.  There were also objects in cases that looked like dust covered souvenirs from trips made 50 years ago.  Trust me, Del Rio’s choices were much more interesting,  

[jeb_bud]

On 9/2/2022 at 5:41 PM, califsealion said:

 

This phrase sounded so familiar I had to google it. It's from a computer game I probably last played 40 years ago. Why does my brain keep these sorts of things???

 

I'm enjoying your travelogue!  Looking forward to the rest!

Colossal Cave Adventure?  My introduction to computer gaming. 

Edited September 4, 2022 by jeb_bud
Fixed an autocorrect mistake.

[lincslady]

Bella - looking forward to your next instalment.

[BellaOnline]

On 9/2/2022 at 12:07 PM, jeb_bud said:

Thank you for this travelogue. My wife and I will be on Voyager for a Athens to Istanbul cruise next May. We haven’t finalized our excursions yet. Not sure if your Mykonos excursion is on our short list but will check. We’re not crazy about forced-march excursions. 
 

how was the weather?

 

I am from Massachusetts, so have that as a caveat. However my mother is from Sarasota Florida and found it the same way I did - VERY humid and hot. She thought she'd be used to the heat and even she was drenched in sweat.

 

I found it extremely bizarre that there was no 'way out' for exhausted people who just wanted to go back to the ship.

[BellaOnline]

On 9/2/2022 at 3:42 PM, pag111 said:

We will be flying out of Istanbul on Turkish Air in mid Oct. Would be very interested to hear what happened on your return flight. 

Turkish Air was VERY HOSTILE. Make sure you have every single I dotted and T crossed before you approach them. They absolutely refused to help us.

[BellaOnline]

On 9/2/2022 at 4:07 PM, irishwitchy said:

Love the forced march excursion!  Mind you I’m the fast walker type,  that gets to a point in a walking tour - I have had an hour of learning something - oh look a great place for lunch,  a drink or shopping - I’m done see you at the ship.   I will always let the guide know we are leaving, but we have gotten lots of concern and comments.  Never had an issue getting back, especially if we know we can walk to the ship.   Enjoying your comments.  

Yes I agree - my mother is also generally a fast walker. But she'd had enough. I found it iffy that the guide would tell people 'you are forced to continue with me - there is no other option'. It's not like we were on the surface of Mars. We were in a fairly small shopping area.

[BellaOnline]

On 9/2/2022 at 5:17 PM, RJ2002 said:

Really enjoying your travelogue.  Looking forward to more. 

Thank you so much! 🙂

[BellaOnline]

On 9/2/2022 at 8:41 PM, califsealion said:

 

This phrase sounded so familiar I had to google it. It's from a computer game I probably last played 40 years ago. Why does my brain keep these sorts of things???

 

I'm enjoying your travelogue!  Looking forward to the rest!

 

Yes exactly, I played the text adventure game "Adventure / Colossal Cave" when growing up. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

[BellaOnline]

On 9/3/2022 at 6:53 AM, lincslady said:

Watching the TV series shown in the UK about the building of the Explorer I was amazed to see the CEO (forgotten his name) choosing the artworks for the ship.  He seemed to be buying them by the yard, at great speed, without any apparent interest as to their quality or looks.

 

Did anyone else notice this episode?   Unfortunately the whole series of programmes was emphasizing the cost of everything, as it was at the time the most expensive cruise ship in the world, according to Regent.  Which it no doubt was.

 

Thought the OP might be interested, after her comments on the art.

 

That lack of attention to detail on the artwork definitely shows. The Oceania ship made a lot of mention about the art collection. At the time I thought it was a bit of hyperbole. Surely every top-end cruise ship had nice art on it. However, after seeing this ship, I realize the Oceania ship really was quite special. Again it's not that the art here is *bad* by any stretch. It's just not as amazing as on the Oceania. 

[BellaOnline]

On 9/3/2022 at 12:23 PM, flossie009 said:

Yes I remember we made the same comment. Frank del Rio's only criteria for choice appeared to be size & colour; maybe he assumed price determined the quality 😉

The best wall decoration for us on Explorer is the excellent variety of vintage photographs on the passenger accommodation decks 🙂

 

I have to admit I chuckled at the vintage photos on deck 8 at least. They were mostly of sexy women from the 1960s in various poses. It was as if they were catering to people who were lusty in the 1960s and wanting to look at bikini-wearing women in that era. As a female who wasn't lusting after females in the 1960s I found that less than enticing. I'd have rather had Mykonos landscapes or heck half male images even.

[BellaOnline]

On 9/3/2022 at 4:32 PM, forgap said:

That’s the thing about art - some pieces speak to the heart, some to the brain, and some to the intestines!  I rather liked Frank del Rio’s championing of South American artists.   I have my favorite pieces on each ship as well as my “worst in show” choices.  Bottom line, though, they always catch my attention.  
 

We just returned from a cruise on the Silversea Whisper.   The art throughout the ship was monochromatic to the level of wallpaper.  There were also objects in cases that looked like dust covered souvenirs from trips made 50 years ago.  Trust me, Del Rio’s choices were much more interesting,  

 

I absolutely agree that we all have different tastes in art. It just seemed like this set wasn't bought with much thought. The Oceania was fascinating to walk through. Here, most of the walls were bare and the ones with items seemed to be the same as the previous items I'd just seen. Again, not everyone cares about art. Some probably don't care at all. But I suppose I was expecting something a bit more, with the level of this ship.

[BellaOnline]

Day 3 / Monday August 22nd / Santorini Greece

 

It was now our second full day of our Regent Seven Seas Explorer cruise! Today, we were going to explore the island of Santorini, Greece. I always think of "Santorini" by Yanni when I think of this island, and in fact I'm listening to the song again as I write this :).

 

The Santorini tour was an early morning one at 8:20am. Santorini is a tender port. This means you can't just walk off the ship. You have to take a small boat from the cruise ship to shore.

 

Thank goodness we actually got SOME sleep last night so we could be ready. We had a quick meal (fruit pieces for me) and then went down to the two-level theater to muster. The theater was STUFFED overfull with people. This was the one and only time that it actually felt like the ship had people on it. To be fair, though, people only sat in the 'edge seats' of rows. The inner seats were all empty. Also, for some bizarre reason, there was practically NO room for people to get past people on a row. The rows were enormously tight front-to-back. So, really, if someone was in an edge seat, there was no way to wriggle past them to get to an inner seat. I know ships want to keep space tight, but the theater row spacing was fairly extreme. Especially when you take into account mobility issues many of the elderly passengers had.

 

The way theater tour processing works, you are given a ticket in your cabin. You then go to the theater with it. You would bring your ticket down to the front area of the theater to trade that ticket in for a specific bus number. A single tour (like ours to Santorini) might have so many people that multiple busses made up the group. It's important, if you're in a group, to get your bus tickets together. Otherwise you could end up on separate busses.

 

Once the appointed time comes around (or often, quite a while past the appointed time) the crew members call groups by number, in order. Eventually they got to our group 15. 

 

We went down the stairs to level 3 which is where the tenders were gathering up people. Tenders are small boats that transport you from the cruise ship to the dock, in situations where the ship can’t make it up close itself. Crew members help you onto the tender. It can be relatively dicey depending on the weather, crossing from the "hole" in the side of the cruise ship over to the deck of the small rocking transport boat.

 

Then it’s a short 5-minute ride or so to land.

 

We all got onto the tender boat. The crew members who help you across the gap are generally burly and well used to doing this.

 

Once we landed, we got onto the indicated bus. This landing area was a narrow land strip with just a few little shops and cafes. We were at the bottom of a VERY steep mountain with back-and-forth roads that the bus had to navigate to get up. It was very challenging for the bus to make the turns, but of course it managed it. Often the bus had to wait at a turn for other cars to wriggle in between, to leave space for us.

 

Soon we were up to the top of the cliff. Where our time on Mykonos was mostly down at sea level, our time on Santorini was mostly up in cliff-edge towns.

 

We drove through fairly quiet rocky landscapes. Along the way our guide strongly warned us that we were going to a tourist market town. There were going to be pickpockets. He warned us quite strenuously to not wear wallets in back pockets. We had to keep them in zippered purses. The purses had to be kept in front of us. The guide was born in Santorini and felt strongly about keeping us safe during our trip.

 

We reached the market town. The bus parked in a lower parking lot. It was a long steep walk to get up to a plaza area. We were brought to a 'corn stand' in a plaza. We were told to take photos of this area and to meet up in an hour in this same spot. Then he walked us a short distance further up the hill to show us the beautiful ocean overlook. Again, he told us to meet in the lower plaza area once we were done shopping.

 

From this upper area, there were two main paths – left and right along the overlook – to look at shops and items. That was really all this was - a shopping area with little shops along the cliff top. It was extremely hot and humid.

 

Mom and I walked around a bit, took some photos, and we stopped at a pharmacy to get something for Mom. Back near the meeting spot, I finally found some cats and owls to buy. It turned out the shop owner used to be a ship captain and had been to Boston many times. He said the people on Cape Cod were not very friendly :).

 

Then Mom and I returned to the meeting place. We found a bench to sit on.

 

Nearly everyone gathered fairly quickly after we got there. However, there was a woman missing and nobody knew where she was, even her husband. The tour guide was worried. The husband provided the phone number, but she wasn’t answering her phone. I said to Mom that everyone should have given the tour guide their phone number ahead of time and he could just 'watch our dots' in case someone got lost.

 

Finally we found that this missing woman was back at the bus. So we could move on.

 

On we went to a winery for tasting. It is a cooperative winery that allows all the Santorini grape growers to work together. Like on our previous Canary Islands cruise, the wine vines here are short bushes, kept short to avoid the strong winds. They manage the volcanic rocky soil. This was not a 'formal wine tasting' situation. We all sat at random small tables along the cliff. For us to eat, there was a tiny buffet just with cheese, tomatoes, and little pistachio rolls which were soon all gone. We could go up to get, one at a time, three glasses of wine. There was no 'information' provided about the wine. 

 

There were restrooms. And then it was time to move on.

 

However, at the bus, a couple said that they realized that they’d lost their wallet. I thought at the time they meant someone at the winery had taken it, which was strange, because it was a fairly open space with a relaxed atmosphere at the winery. It was definitely not a 'pickpocket' kind of environment. Nobody got anywhere near anyone else in the patio area.

 

It turns out the wallet had actually gone missing back in the dense-packed shopping alleys of the town, which makes much more sense. The woman first thought she just left it at the pharmacy. But with the tour guide's help she called the pharmacy and they didn't have it there. It became more clear that it was actually stolen after her pharmacy visit.

 

The tour guide was very upset by this. He’s a local and has done tours for ten years. He had never had anything stolen from one of his people. He had done everything he could to make it VERY clear to us to watch our wallets. He made grumpy comments about Albanians and such coming to his island and causing trouble. I thought that a little iffy - what if someone in our group was Albanian? He could hardly know the thief was an Albanian. But he clearly blamed the 'invasive Albanians'.

 

We went on with our tour. The woman would have to report the theft at a police station at our next stop.

 

The third stop was - yup - another shopping town to explore. The bus again stopped in a fairly distant parking area and we all had to get out. We walked up a long steep road to get to a plaza area. We were told we could explore town as long as we wanted. When we were done we’d have to take a cable car down as the easiest route. The other two options were a donkey ride or walking steep stairs. I.e. there was no direct way back to the ship. We were on a cliff top. To get to the ship you had to get to the cliff bottom, and the bus was NOT an option.

 

I’d heard MANY horror stories about the donkeys scraping your leg hard against the cliff as it went down. The donkeys were NOT an option for me.

 

Mom wanted to get right for the cable car, as did pretty much everyone else. We did poke into a church for a minute before heading over to the cable car line. It was a ten minute walk through dense crowds to get to the cable car line. This was a VERY long line that snaked through the streets. We got into line at 1:42 and were at the cable car embarkation area at 2:08. So 24 minutes in the hot sun. This was the only option other than walking down.

 

The actual area where you get onto the cable car is a bit risky. It is a steep set of stairs, where the cable cars come in. I.e. the cable cars are on a "sloped line" when they come to rest. So you have to stand on steep stairs waiting for the cable cars to come to a stop to climb in. It could be very easy to trip and fall on those stairs. I wish there was another option for people to get back to the ship, other than these cable cars. Certainly I would not recommend the donkeys or walking for elderly people.

I helped Mom into the cable car. It holds about 5-6 people each on two opposing metal benches.

On the cable car ride, we could see the donkeys. The people with us in our cable car with us told us they'd personally heard horror stories about the donkeys scraping peoples' legs against the cliff. I tell you, avoid the donkeys.

 

We disembarked at the bottom.

 

Once we got out of the cable car facility, the Regent dock was right there and a tender was waiting. We climbed onto the tender and very quickly we were heading back to the ship. We were helped on board and were set!

 

Shower time!

 

Mom went to listen to a lecture, so I went over toward the gym to experience the 6pm guided meditation. I love yoga and meditation and was thrilled our schedule let me give this a try.

The gym is at the back of the ship next to a bunch of cabins. It turns out all the cabins on both left and right were blocked off, marked quarantine. Hmmm. 

 

I had to go down to the spa entrance on the floor below, and then go up through internal stairs to get to the gym. It turns out I was the only one there for the meditation. When I went up, a pair of very bulky men was using the meditation room for weight lifting. My meditation man came up and scolded the weight lifters (crew members, I think) in Greek (I think) for being there. They said something unhappy in return and he snapped something probably meaning "she is a guest, get lost."

The two men wiped up most of their sweat and left. 

 

The meditation man put a yoga mat for me right next to the remaining sweat pools :). As directed, I laid down on the mat. 

 

He put on typical meditation-type music. He told me to breathe in deeply, then out a few short breaths. Then he said nothing. I kept breathing. I could hear lots of strong grunting from the weight-lifters in the next room.

 

About five minutes later he said something about breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Then nothing. 

 

A while later, he had me sit up and breathe-hold-release. Then nothing. Then he had me stand and make ten arm circles. We were done, after a half hour.

 

I wouldn’t quite call that a guided meditation. I won’t be going back for that :).

 

My mom thought there was Chinese food tonight on the Veranda, but no, it was Italian again. So we went over to the main dining room. They put us into the exact same seat at the first time, which is sort of a shame. One would sort of like to see different things. Mom really wanted to see the sunset, but the sun set ‘over a mountain’ on a nearby island and she was sad that it didn’t set on the water itself. I showed her a map that we are inside a volcano caldera and the sun can’t set on the water in here.

 

I had seared tuna over veggies and then filet mignon. Chocolate mousse for dessert. It was all nice, although the meat is tougher than I'd expect. Also, these first few nights, they only gave us butter knives. Very strange. They gave us actual meat knives later in the trip.

 

Instructions had been broadcast to the rooms to please bring copies of your Turkish visas to the reception desk sometime today. So, after dinner, I stopped by the reception desk to drop off my Turkish visa. They made a xerox copy of it. While there, I heard that at least two different people had had their wallets stolen in Santorini. So it is a place to be cautious.

 

Tonight was my teen writing group I run online. I went to the computer area and fortunately they have US plugs so I didn’t have to deal with my converter. I did a test zoom with my boyfriend Bob. Near the end I had (ahem) gastric distress. I wonder if it was the tuna that did it. It was the only time during my trip I felt unwell (thank goodness).

 

After my Bob-Zoom session, I went back to the room and took a nap. Then I returned and ran the class from 12 midnight to 3am. The connection hiccupped a few times due to the satellite signal, as we were sailing between Santorini and Crete at the time, but it always came back, thankfully.

 

Then off to bed!!

 

Step count: 8354 steps

 

[ronrick1943]

Nice review, thank you for taking the time.

[papaflamingo]

2 hours ago, BellaOnline said:

I tell you, avoid the donkeys.

You got THAT right!   We made the mistake of riding the donkeys down a number of years ago.  The donkeys are tied together and led by a guy on foot.  My wife was on the donkey ahead of mine so mine was tied to hers.  She had a "killer donkey."  It didn't try to rub her leg on the wall, but instead would go from one side of the path to the other pushing people walking down into the walls!  All my wife said the whole way down was "I'm sorry....I'm sorry... I'm sorry!"   And THEN my donkey walked up and had it's head next to my wife's donkey and suddenly her donkey raised it's tail and I KNEW what was coming!  I quickly lifted my leg as much as I could while her donkey "unloaded" right where my leg had been!!!  😱. 

Yeah.... NEVER...EVER...EVER ride the donkeys, especially down.  And by the way, don't even consider walking down.  All that "stuff" on the trail was "dumped" by the donkeys!  😜

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by papaflamingo

[RJ2002]

2 hours ago, BellaOnline said:

My mom thought there was Chinese food tonight on the Veranda, but no, it was Italian again. 

 

As your cruise continued, you probably discovered that each evening La Veranda is 'transformed' to the Italian venue, Setti Mare.  

 

Lots of dining choices on Explorer.  Hope you were able to experience some of the other options.

 

We were on Explorer a couple of segments before you (Barcelona-Rome), and I'm enjoying reading about you and your Mom's time onboard.

[irishwitchy]

Wow, I would normally be on the donkey, but I  may have to rethink that if I’m ever there.  

[papaflamingo]

8 hours ago, irishwitchy said:

Wow, I would normally be on the donkey, but I  may have to rethink that if I’m ever there.  

Don't "re-think," UN-THINK it!!  Our "adventure" above should serve as a warning.  In addition, during our ride down, my donkey stumbled 2 or 3 times and almost went down.  It's worth waiting for the Funicular.  Just give yourself enough time to stand in line, especially if there are multiple ships in. 

[Dr. Cocktail]

Bella: Great review so far!

 

I will be making a long awaited return to cruising this winter and will be trying Regent for the first time so your thoughts are much appreciated!

 

A discussion on donkey poo? How would it NOT be possible for me to weigh in?!

 

Our last time in Santorini was 11 years ago and there were 1/2 a dozen ships in port. An entirely different poo show!   After arriving in town, we did an exhausting 49 second walk, said hello to the most deserving (ok, all of the) cats and sat on a rooftop patio and killed a bottle or two of rose.

 

The line up at the cable car was INSANE - an hour + wait in a slightly higher temperature than I would use to roast my Thanksgiving turkey.

 

Now, at that time I was 48 years old (my partner was 46), both of us 6 feet tall and weighing about 165 pounds. Now 1) I hate animal poo. 2) hate bad smells 3) hate the heat and 4) don't particularly like donkeys or pony's or the such.

 

Bad attitude in hand, we walked down .... I would love to say that it was the worst experience of my life but it wasn't. We chatted with a woman our age as we went down. The BIG challenge is that is extremely physically challenging - I do/did about 50 minutes of intense cardio daily and it left all of us knackered by the end.  

 

Our first thing onboard was to stand with our shoes in the pool shower - those feet were NOT marching down a carpeted corridor!

[BellaOnline]

18 hours ago, ronrick1943 said:

Nice review, thank you for taking the time.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I find it very valuable to read other cruisers' reviews before I go on a cruise, so I want to 'pay it forward'.

[BellaOnline]

16 hours ago, papaflamingo said:

You got THAT right!   We made the mistake of riding the donkeys down a number of years ago.  The donkeys are tied together and led by a guy on foot.  My wife was on the donkey ahead of mine so mine was tied to hers.  She had a "killer donkey."  It didn't try to rub her leg on the wall, but instead would go from one side of the path to the other pushing people walking down into the walls!  All my wife said the whole way down was "I'm sorry....I'm sorry... I'm sorry!"   And THEN my donkey walked up and had it's head next to my wife's donkey and suddenly her donkey raised it's tail and I KNEW what was coming!  I quickly lifted my leg as much as I could while her donkey "unloaded" right where my leg had been!!!  😱. 

Yeah.... NEVER...EVER...EVER ride the donkeys, especially down.  And by the way, don't even consider walking down.  All that "stuff" on the trail was "dumped" by the donkeys!  😜

 

Wow that is scary! The donkeys sound like a real menace!

[BellaOnline]

16 hours ago, RJ2002 said:

 

As your cruise continued, you probably discovered that each evening La Veranda is 'transformed' to the Italian venue, Setti Mare.  

 

Lots of dining choices on Explorer.  Hope you were able to experience some of the other options.

 

We were on Explorer a couple of segments before you (Barcelona-Rome), and I'm enjoying reading about you and your Mom's time onboard.

Yes it turns out my mom was looking at the lunch menu when she saw a Chinese option, not the dinner menu. We did end up eating everywhere at some point, I'm pretty sure. The food in general was quite good, although I found some of the meat to be a bit tough.

[BellaOnline]

11 hours ago, irishwitchy said:

Wow, I would normally be on the donkey, but I  may have to rethink that if I’m ever there.  

Avoid The Donkeys :).

[BellaOnline]

3 hours ago, papaflamingo said:

Don't "re-think," UN-THINK it!!  Our "adventure" above should serve as a warning.  In addition, during our ride down, my donkey stumbled 2 or 3 times and almost went down.  It's worth waiting for the Funicular.  Just give yourself enough time to stand in line, especially if there are multiple ships in. 

Yes, our tour guide said in essence "hang out in town for another 3 hours, the line will reduce once another ship or two leaves port". But our entire group was exhausted by that point and wanted to get back to their rooms to shower and nap. I think it would have helped a lot if people knew up front what the situation was going to be, to mentally prepare.

[BellaOnline]

2 hours ago, Dr. Cocktail said:

Bella: Great review so far!

 

I will be making a long awaited return to cruising this winter and will be trying Regent for the first time so your thoughts are much appreciated!

 

A discussion on donkey poo? How would it NOT be possible for me to weigh in?!

 

Our last time in Santorini was 11 years ago and there were 1/2 a dozen ships in port. An entirely different poo show!   After arriving in town, we did an exhausting 49 second walk, said hello to the most deserving (ok, all of the) cats and sat on a rooftop patio and killed a bottle or two of rose.

 

The line up at the cable car was INSANE - an hour + wait in a slightly higher temperature than I would use to roast my Thanksgiving turkey.

 

Now, at that time I was 48 years old (my partner was 46), both of us 6 feet tall and weighing about 165 pounds. Now 1) I hate animal poo. 2) hate bad smells 3) hate the heat and 4) don't particularly like donkeys or pony's or the such.

 

Bad attitude in hand, we walked down .... I would love to say that it was the worst experience of my life but it wasn't. We chatted with a woman our age as we went down. The BIG challenge is that is extremely physically challenging - I do/did about 50 minutes of intense cardio daily and it left all of us knackered by the end.  

 

Our first thing onboard was to stand with our shoes in the pool shower - those feet were NOT marching down a carpeted corridor!

 

It is just so strange to me that donkeys, brutal walk, or brutal line are the options the town provides to people - especially elderly people who might need to get to their medicine. The tour write-up didn't warn about an 'hour wait to get down to the tender, waiting standing in the heat'. That kind of information might be a make-it-or-break-it issue for some people. I know the town wants to keep a historic feel about the process, but surely for safety reasons there should be another quicker / safer option, too.

[BellaOnline]

Day 4 / Tuesday August 23rd/ Crete Greece

 

We were now at the island of Crete. We had been scheduled for a long 5-hour tour today which came with a ‘lots of walking’ warning. Because the last two days had been so tiring, on tours with NO walking warning at all, we decided to cancel our tickets for today’s tour. That meant I could sleep in! Hurrah!

 

My wonderful mom brought me some fruit back from the buffet, which was lovely. I tried to sleep some more, but the ship's crew was doing ship alarm testing so there were blaring alarms going off all the time. Not conducive to sleep.

 

For lunch, Prime 7, one of the specialty restaurants, was open. No reservations needed. It was lovely. I had seared tuna. Then we gathered our things to go explore the town on foot. I wore my usual Ukrainian-angel earrings, Ukrainian-colored hairband, and Ukrainian-colored bracelet.

 

You would think for a touristy town like this that their dock area would have easy access to the city center. But the walk is along busy streets with no benches, no shade, and fairly narrow walking areas. There are steep stairs. There's a "yellow line" on the ground to follow, but it's not always clear which way to follow it. By the time we got up to the center of the city, Mom was exhausted. We sat on a bench. After a while of people-watching she was ready to go back.

 

I'll note the first two Greek islands were 'beautiful' - white buildings, blue domes, and the like. Picturesque. This stop, at least where we walked to, was just 'industrial'. Square brown buildings, car-filled streets, and so on. It felt like 'any other city'.

 

I was looking for a shawl for a friend, so we stopped into a few stores. I found a lovely ‘protective eye’ shawl at one shop. While we were chatting with the store clerk, she asked us where we were from. My mom said the US. The store clerk said, in essence, “No, where are you REALLY from” indicating my earrings. Yes, the store clerk was Ukrainian, too, and we had a good conversation.

 

The walk back to the ship was just as hot, humid, and arduous. I was drenched in sweat. We at last got to the ship terminal and went through security. We only needed our ship cards, no other paperwork. Then a short walk to the ship itself and up the gangplank. We checked in with our cards and didn’t have to go through security a second time.

 

Up to the room! Right into the shower!

 

We relaxed in the room until about 6pm, when we decided to go down and hear the guitarist. We really hadn’t done any ship “musical activities” until now and thought it time to give them a try.

The lounge area was quite nice, with a small stage. The guitarist had a tiny travel guitar and played from iPad-style tablet notes. Unfortunately, most of the people around us were babbling at quite high volumes so it was hard to hear him, even in the ‘second row’ of tables. He did play some older classics like from the Beatles and Eric Clapton, but he also (amusingly to me) played some fairly recent hard-rock kinds of songs, and songs like 'Nothing Else Matters'. So there was a mix.

 

Nearly all of the cocktails on the menu featured fruits. I had a lychee martini. The wait-staff brought around little snacks like a roll of salmon with cream cheese and a little container of olives.

 

After an hour set the musician was done. We went to the Compass Rose for dinner. We were seated in another area, perhaps because all the window tables were taken. The food had lovely presentation and was delicious.

 

I will note something odd about wine here. Passengers get base-level wines for free, unlimited, and then you can pay to get more expensive options. On a given evening's menu they show you ONE white and ONE red for the free options. That's it. If you ask for a wine list, they only show you the for-pay wines. There is no way to know what all your free white and red options are. It might easily be that the free white on tonight's menu is a very acidic sharp one which just doesn't go with your chosen main dish. You'd rather have a buttery chardonnay. But now you're stuck in a guessing game asking them what other free whites they have, and having them try to describe those options to you. It makes no sense at all. It took a few days into the cruise before we started to have a sense of what our options REALLY were, to know what we could order with different dishes.

 

I thought about doing laundry after dinner. However, I realized that it was too late, as the laundry room closed at 10pm. So I put off laundry until tomorrow. 

 

It was time to sleep!

 

We didn't end up seeing much of Crete, but I am very glad we did not completely burn ourselves out on a long-distance walking tour. We still had many cruise days remaining that we wanted to enjoy. As it turns out, even just walking on our own into town we walked nearly the same step count as we did yesterday.

 

Step Count: 7347