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Published: October 16th 2006
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Our cabin on the Sea Diamond
Mike studies the cruise itinerary in room 10205. The rooms we had were among the best on the ship. We were on the second highest deck and in an area with very few other cabins. It was nice and quiet. And best of all, we had excellent a/c. Mike liked it cool too so we cranked it up. I think Jurgen is even more excited than the rest of us going on the cruise. He had us up early and ready to board the bus at 8:00 am even though the ship wasn't scheduled to leave from Piraeus (less than half an hour away) until 11:00. After another nice breakfast buffet we said goodbye to the folks that were skipping the cruise and staying another day in Athens.
Boarding the bus to Piraeus was pretty nice since each one of us had our own row of seats. I don't know if our bus driver (not Niko) was confused or lost but it took us almost 45 minutes to get there. Good thing Jurgen got us up early. He was in rare form this morning. He regaled us with a couple X-rated tour guide stories that had everyone rolling in the aisles. Especially the one about the fat chick that barged into his room, jumped on him and almost suffocated him.
In any case, we still got to the ship way too early. We sat on top of our suitcases waiting in the departure terminal for almost an hour before boarding commenced. The whole time we patiently waited
And here I thought that was roast beef in the sandwiches
While Gail and her mom "rested", Mike and I headed downstairs to the very crowded buffet room. By the time we got to the buffet table things were already winding down. Fortunately, a hoagie was exactly what I was missing by week two of our vacation. I filled my plate using the tongues, I mean "tongs", provided. in line, small groups of non-Americans barged ahead of us. It was somewhat irritating but knowing we already had assigned cabins and that the boat wasn't going to leave without us I tried not to let it bother me too much. Once boarding started I kind of understood why these jerks had pushed ahead. The check-in, security, passport control and actual boarding was a bit chaotic. You'd think that by doing this every week the cruise line would have things worked out a bit better. Even though I got through rather handily, Gail had to hang around as a few of our kids experienced some problems with security. My roomie for the cruise, Mike, had his armory temporarily taken from him for safekeeping. He was given receipts for his knives, swords, grenades, bazookas and whatever else he had bought so far. He was assured he'd get it all back when we returned on Monday.
When we left the terminal we were only a few steps from our humongous ship, the
Sea Diamond. It looked clean and freshly painted. It wasn't nearly as luxurious-looking as some of the cruise ships we had seen in Venice harbor, but it looked like we'd
Entering Mykonos harbor
The picturesque town of Mykonos on the island of the same name features a much-photographed harbor. However, our huge cruise ship was much too big and drew a lot more water than the tiny harbor offered. Instead, we docked about a mile up the coast. be quite comfortable.
Once on board it didn't take us long to find our way around. Thanks to Gail's preferred leader status at EF Tours we were given better than average accomodations. Mike and I got a rather spacious double room with a decent sized bathroom. I knew not to expect a hotel-sized room and this wasn't, but it gave us plenty of room to fit our suitcases and Mike's bags of souvenirs.
Mike and I spent a good half hour reading the ship's itinerary, dining rules, list of facilities, optional excursions and of course, the menus. When I went next door to ask Gail if she wanted to go explore the ship. I found her and her mom already sleeping. Mike and I took our own tour of the ship. Everything seemed very nice, clean and kind of interesting. But it didn't take me long to realize that what I most dreaded about being on board a cruise ship was very likely going to happen: I was gonna be bored to death. I'm not one for laying around on the upper deck or joing a giant pinnochle or bingo tournament. The pool was the size of a
The Lund family in Mykonos
This was one of the very few times all four of us were together for a photo. As usual, Cassie kept busy with her friends and pretended she didn't know us. We were into the second week of the trip when Jim said "I didn't know you had your daughter with you on this trip". hot tub. They had three or four computers but they cost something like one Euro per minute. We had been told before we boarded that we could inform the purser that we wanted the unlimited drinks option for the three days of the cruise. That sounded like it might keep me busy.
I then went down to the purser's office to sign up and to give them my credit card number for any other charges, like excursions or gift shop purchases. And naturally, they would be happy to charge my tips for the crew on my card. When I got to the appropriate deck I was faced with a long, long line of maybe 30 people waiting. I realized the line would only get longer as more people boarded the ship. By the time I reached the purser's window the boat was casting off from the dock. I gave the Russian lady assistant purser by Visa and said I wanted the unlimited booze option. She ran my card but then said, "I am sorry but Mr. Mike has decided not to take the drink option". I asked what that had to do with me. She nastily informed me that
Why did people ever settle on this island?
Mykonos is an interesting place because of the white-washed buildings, kitschy shops and wacko people, but the geography of the place looks like the moon. It is the most desolate-looking place I've ever been, and that includes Death Valley, the Mojave Desert and the state of Utah. Maybe the first inhabitants were trying to hide and this was a place nobody else would stop and visit. everyone in the same cabin had to either accept or refuse the drink option. They apparently learned over the years that if one roomie paid for the option and the other didn't, the one with the unlimited booze would supply the other. That kind of irked me at the time because I might have liked to drink myself into oblivion, but I understood where Mike the athlete was coming from. What did really worry me was what might happen with some of our students. They weren't eligible for free booze, but the ship had a special 25 Euro deal where those under 18 could have unlimited non-alcoholic drinks. What if the same thing that happened to me happened to them? I could see some whining and crying if the first roommate opted for the unlimited drinks while the other roommates didn't have enough money to incur that debt. I later learned that that did indeed happen, but by the end of the trip those things were worked-out.
When I returned back to our cabin on the second highest deck of the ship, Gail and her mother were still resting. I found Mike and we went down for the buffet
Little Venice
For some reason this section of Mykonos harbor was labeled on our maps as "Little Venice". It doesn't look anything like Venice to me. It's very pretty and has been used in a number of movies over the years. lunch. Unlike the Caribbean cruise lines, the Sea Diamond closed down the lunch buffet at 2:00. We got in another long line at 1:00. It took almost half an hour to get to the first table of food. I wasn't worried about not getting enough to eat but the dining area was so full of people that I was concerned we'd have to stand to eat. People were just hanging around gorging themselves, piling their trays with tons of food they'd never eat. It reminded me of my experiences at travel agents' functions. The people on the ship weren't filling their purses with food...yet, but they were in the same feeding frenzy. By the time we got our food and turned to look for a table, a couple other kids in our group were getting ready to leave so we grabbed their table. The food was plentiful and ok, but nothing to die for. It was typical buffet stuff: Lots of carbs in the form of pasta, potatoes, bread and rolls. They had a couple giant hoagies cut into 2 inch squares and I loaded up on that.
Mike went off on his own and I walked around the
A bistro in Mykonos
The entire little village was just as pretty as this. It looked like a nice place to overnight and enjoy the night life, but I learned later that it's mostly populated by Gays. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just a little disappointed I didn't get any stares or winks as I passed by in my shorts and sneakers. ship again. I spent about ten minutes exploring the Duty Free shop. I walked through the deserted disco/bar at the front of the ship. Then I took a quick peak into the more formal dining rooms as well as the big nightclub at the back of the ship. Now I was really bored. I went back to the room intending to do some reading. As soon as I lay on the bed to read I began to get sleepy. About that time Mike returned saying he was going to take a nap. We wasted a couple of hours sleeping through our cruise.
I awoke to Gail's phone call asking us if we were going to get off the ship. I had no idea what she was talking about but I suddenly noticed we weren't moving. It seemed we had reached our first stop - Mykonos. Looking back on the cruise and seeing a map of the Aegean islands it is astounding how close all those islands are to mainland Greece and to Turkey too. Whenever I took the time to go out on deck and observe our progress across the waves there was always some sort of land mass
My kind of place
I was a little tempted to try one of these local food stands, but I was still stuffed from the shipboard buffet. And who knows if you can really trust these little places to maintain sanitary standards. I'd really like to know how they put all that meat on that big skewer. Every time we saw one of those rotisserie things, the meat looked exactly the same size, same color and same shape. Maybe it was following us throughout Greece. on either side. Most of the time these were small islands but at no time were we in totally open water. It's pretty cool to think that these are the same islands that Odysseus had so much trouble traveling through. We made it from Greece almost to the Turkish mainland in less than six hours while it took Odysseus ten years to get home to Ithaca from Troy.
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