There are too many things available to do on a cruise, especially on “at sea” days. Our lives are full enough of lists, decisions, and priorities. Our list of activities on the ship during our seven-day cruise is rather short compared to the endless schedule of events offered: learned to swing and salsa, saw several entertainment-type shows, played mini-golf, swam, ate, read, slept. It was perfect…after Erin got used to there being 2000 people milling around everywhere she went. We always managed to find some chairs in the sun to read and take naps.
For those of you who do keep up with the world news, there were indeed three bombings targeting tourist areas in Turkey two days before we were supposed to stop there. Ephesus was one of the ports we were really looking forward to visiting; we had our own tour scheduled and everything. After a very long, hot day in Athens on Tuesday, the captain announced we would not be stopping in Turkey, but would go on to our other two ports of call, adding a stop in Dubrovnik, Croatia on Friday. Hmmm. It was a bit ironic to us that we were avoiding the danger of bombings in Turkey by visiting a country that had been at war for about 3,000 years with hostilities just coming to an end within the last decade. In Dubrovnik, by the way, visitors can still see effects of bombings in streets, buildings, and roofs. Nevertheless, we felt completely safe in Dubrovnik and it is a very pretty city (at least the old part of town by the port is, which is the only part of town we really walked around in).
Our first stop was in Athens, and we were there for a good part of the day. The city of Athens itself is big, smelly, loud, and dirty. There are stray dogs absolutely everywhere! Last night we decided to do a little research on the internet to figure out if there is some explanation for the vast population of stray dogs in Greece. Sure enough, someone decided to create a whole webpage dedicated to this phenomenon! Erin especially enjoyed the very last section on the page about “dogopotomus.” We digress.
Walking around in the Ancient Agora, admiring Athens from the Acropolis, seeing the Parthenon and the Porch of the Maidens with our own eyes, and wandering around the gigantic columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus was an incredible experience. John bought a hat in Athens that says something in Greek that we have yet to decipher, and we negotiated the metro system from the port into the actual city of Athens with only one slight mishap (buying the wrong kind of ticket on the first try).
Our tour of Heraklion, Crete was a whirlwind since we were only there about 4 hours. We had decided in advance to get a taxi from the port to go see the Palace of Knossos and from there we would either take another taxi or the bus to the Archaeological Museum back in the center of the city. As expected, taxis were lined up waiting for all of us cruise tourists to get off the ship. The first guy said he would charge us €60 for a drive out to the palace. (That’s around $77) €60! Come on! It’s only about a 15 minute drive. John decided to try to negotiate with another guy further back in the line. After being told once that we had to go to the first taxi in line, we found a guy who said he’s take us out to the palace for €15. That’s more like it!
We ended up pretty much getting a free tour of the palace (which is really just a lot of “ruins” that aren’t even original since they were mostly rebuilt in the early 20th century) because there were so many other tour groups, all from our cruise ship, clogging up the walkways. Archaeology is amazing to me. How do people find pieces of this and that while they dig around a huge area like the Knossos Palace and then figure out exactly what the palace looked like and fit together millions of tiny pieces of clay to make jars and stuff? Neither of us would personally want this job, but the whole thing is astonishing. We took the bus back to the city for only €1.50 per person, and fortunately the bus driver asked us where we were going and pointed out exactly where the museum was at the last stop. Who knows how long we would have been wondering around aimlessly, trying to read signs in Greek, when the museum was really just a half block away?
The third port of call was Corfu. This was our absolute favorite place! We could have stayed on this island for another month! We rented a car that was available for us right at the port and spent the day driving around the island, taking breaks for pictures and short walks, and spending a couple hours at a gorgeous beach. Actually, it was our insistence that we stay as long as possible at the beach that caused us to almost miss the boat. On the map, it looked like it would only take about 15 or 20 minutes to get back to the port. We forgot that the roads in Corfu are extremely narrow and winding, so there’s no zooming down the highway. In some towns, the roads are so narrow, with cars parked along the side, that there’s a light on either end of the town so only one side of traffic goes through the town at a time. Earlier in the day we waited about 20 minutes at this one light waiting for our turn. Ironically, only a few towns operate the light system when there are plenty of other towns with the same narrow road situation but no light; drivers just hold their breath every time they go around a curve, hoping they will not meet a tour bus. Luckily, we ran into no lights on our way back to the port – just hugging the side of narrow roads on the edge of sheer drop-offs. Really, the problem didn’t start until we got to Corfu Town, where the port is, when we realized we did not have a detailed map of the town and had no idea how to get from where we were to the port. After hitting one dead-end road, turning around and seeing that the ship was leaving in about 15 minutes, Erin started panicking while trying desperately to stay focused enough to direct John along the correct route since he had even less of an idea where we should be headed. We pulled into the parking lot (thankfully we’d already paid for the car) told the man meeting us that we appreciated the service, and high-tailed it back to the ship where we boarded about 30 seconds before the deadline.
Since we knew nothing about Dubrovnik, and again did not want to shell out more money for a cruise ship tour, we bought a “top 10” book while we were in Crete. After cutting it so close getting back aboard the ship the previous day, we decided to take it easy. We were not in a hurry to get off the ship at the crack of dawn and we ended up touring the rector’s palace, the city walls, and doing a little souvenir shopping. The shopping was mostly just to spend the last few kunas we had taken out of the ATM. We really were not even sure what the exchange rate of kunas to euros was, but last night John looked on our bank account and figured out we only spent €40 the entire day! So, we guess Croatia is pretty cheap.
With all the sight-seeing and walking around in the sun, you can see why we did not especially want to do much of anything on our sea days aboard the ship! We did get up early one morning to see the sunrise and go swimming, which was followed by a late morning nap. Probably another favorite time on the ship was at night when there was no one else on the decks. On one clear night we sat and looked at the stars. It reminded Erin of when she was a little girl, living in a tiny town where she could go out on the driveway at night and see tons of stars without any big city lights. It was great! There was a more than half full moon on the final evening of the cruise that was big and yellow near the horizon. The water was pretty calm, and the moon shone a long, golden ribbon of light across the sea. We have some memories we will never forget!
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