amberwavestour: A Week's Worth of Musings

As I sit in our enormous (after a week sharing a generous yet still pint-sized cabin at sea) hotel room in Vienna, with Internet access to spare (well, we're actually "limited" to six devices, which you wouldn't think would be problematic, but then you didn't just spend a week at sea without it ;), I can finally catch up on the last week's worth of activities and observations. Of course, I don't wish to write a tome about our week cruising the Greek islands, so, instead, I'll just offer some random musings:

A week's worth of sunsets like this one!

Which Daniel happily mock posed for - again and again ;)

Relaxing on our balcony

We felt connected to Clay, Alex, Sophia and Fiona, as our ship, the Jade, was decked out in Hawaiian decorations from top to bottom. It was lovely to be greeted with murals wishing you aloha, but a bit out of character with the blue and white motif we had expected to find. ;)
The food and entertainment on the ship were wonderful. We especially enjoyed the Beatles Invasion ("George" was adorable!) and a Vegas style/worthy magic show.
After losing at BlackJack all week, Dana won all that money back - with perhaps a dollar or two extra - on the final night of the cruise.
Luis, our cabin steward, is a towel art god!
Sitting on a private balcony during an at sea day is one of the most peaceful feelings on earth.
While we actively avoided sitting with anyone else during other meals, our seatmates during our Tepinyaki dinner, a lovely older couple from Scotland, were wonderful. They even came to root Daniel on during Karaoke later that night. He performed a Sinatra tune, "You Make Me Feel So Young" - and slayed it.
After we returned to the ship from each day in port, we were greeted with ice cold wash cloths (often desperately needed after the hot and sweaty trek back to port) and cups of water - mango or plain, which we all declared was our new favorite part of the NCL experience.

The ports themselves:

Our first stop was Corfu, which delighted us. We always created our own excursions at a fraction of what the cruise would have charged us, and here we boarded an adorable train that took us around the island (delightful, but for when we passed the huge, smelly garbage heaps - as yet another strike was in progress) and dropped us near the "old fort," which we dutifully climbed (as Dana noted earlier in the trip, "people like to have something to climb.") - leading to spectacular views and the further rationalization that it was okay to have dessert at each meal when we are walking this much!

Can't convey how entertaining it is to travel with these two!
The second port was Santorini, which is the island I had heard the most about leading up to our trip. I recall it being Andie's favorite when she and Morrie traveled to Greece many years ago. It lives up to the hype. While none of these islands are particularly easy, in terms of accessibility, this one is particularly challenging. We had to take a tender to a tiny port, where we had to either climb, take a mule, or take a cable car to Fira, the cliffside village where no cars enter. Instead we opted to take a boat ride to another tiny port at the foot of Oia (pronounced hard E soft a) and work our way back to Fira, and, finally, by our departure time of 9:30, our ship. This day consisted of much walking up and down small, steep steps through two charming pedestian only villages filled with blue-roofed white buildings against that outrageously gorgeous backdrop. This was the day that found the children belting "SOS" and other Mama Mia inspired numbers as they struck various dramatic poses around the villages. We posted several photos -- including Dana's great panoramic that Facebook allows you to experience virtually (how cool is that?) - so we were able to share in the moment how special our day in Fira and Oia was.

the colors; no words can do justice to the colors...

Dana in his element

I'd return to stay at that lovely little resort :)

The view from our cafe, where we stopped in for an iced drink and a crepe

I mean - really! I couldn't stop taking photographs. This place is a phtographer's paradise

did I mention the colors?

Of course, our trek down the cliff from Fira at the end of our spectacular sunset dinner was a bit less glamorous. We (okay, mostly me) thought it would be "faster" to walk down the path rather than to wait for the cable car. We knew it was 600 steps. What we didn't know was that the path was often shrouded in darkness and that the donkeys who had made their way up the path all day had left many gifts for us to deftly avoid on our way down. Final fun challenge - my sandals had no traction whatsoever, and the stone steps were often smooth, leading to potentially catastrophic falls. In essence, there was going to be nothing quick about this descent. Luckily, enough of our cruisemates were equally taken by Santorini that there was yet another tender after ours (which left 15 minutes after what was to be the final tender to the ship), so all was well in the end.

Day three found us in Mykonos, where we all agreed it was time for a "beach day." When we got off the shuttle from the new port to the old port, we were greeted with a choice. Did we want to pay a bit less and travel to "Paradise" beach, or pay a bit more and travel to "Super Paradise" beach. Dana insisted that, as good Americans, we must choose "Super Paradise." We agreed, reminded ourselves that our transportation to Super Paradise was still a fraction of the cost of one such excursion offered by the cruise ship, and happily boarded our mini-bus for the drive around the island to a lovely, tranquil cove (at 9:30 a.m., that is; the previous night it had been the rollicking party spot that has earned it its super paradise moniker for decades). Here we rented lounges and umbrellas and entered the very chilly (but quite welcome after the time we'd spent trekking in the heat the past two days) Aegean sea, where Daniel and Maddie shared with us the mythological stories that they remember far more freshly than we do (especially Daniel, who just studied them last year). After a glorious few hours in super paradise, we took the mini-bus back to town, where we walked through more step lined narrow passageways, decidedly more crowded than the "streets" of Santorini but almost as pretty.
Our final port was to Katakolon, which is chosen as it is the gateway to Olympia. I had read that there is a train that takes you into Katakolon. Though the onboard tour excursion specialists were loathe to confirm this fact, lest we avoid their inflated tour prices, we took our chances. Sure enough, just a few blocks through the shop filled steets of Katakolon is a train, which takes you on a 45 minute ride through the lush and sometimes bustling areas of Katakolon (an island that feels far more residential than either Santorini or Mykonos did) to the charming village of Olympia and the site itself, which is, as you might expect, quite large. We foolishly didn't bring water bottles with us, so after a couple of hours exploring the ruins under the very hot sun, we were more than ready for some hydration. Luckily, after our look through the museum, we found a shady spot for a wonderful lunch before taking the train back to Katakolon and our ship. Looking at artifacts in the museum that were five centuries old and walking among ruins, some of which were intentionally destroyed by Christians disgusted at the worship of multiple gods, others that were destroyed by nature (a devastating earthquake felled the Temple of Zeus) provides a tremendous dose of perspective regarding our place in the world.

The tiny Archimedes' Museum was a great discovery in Olympia

Dana, Maddie and Daniel pose in front of what was once the gymnasium - note they've found the shady spot to stand! :)

I will never look at the "Olympic Village" in the same way again!

Each island has something special to recommend it, so when we would discuss our favorites over dinner each night, our order and choices would invariably change. I'm not sure if I will ever get back to this particular part of the world, so I am very happy to have had the chance to see such healthy glimpses of it through the relative ease of cruise travel. If I were to come back to one of these island for an extended holiday, it would likely be Santorini, but each is breathtaking in its own way.

After four relatively exhausting back to back ports, we were thrilled to have a final "at sea" day where we could do nothing other than decide which trivia events we wanted to attend. Having so little access to Internet, and, thus, news, during this past week was odd, especially when we would get partial notifications of the violence occurring back home. We finally got a BBC broadcast on the cruise on Friday, which filled us in on a bit of what we missed. Dana marveled at how different our media saturation would have been had we been home, and how the BBC's tempered report was likely a far more objective and effective overview. While it feels strange to be away from your home when such tragic events are unfolding, it also provides a reminder that the 24/7 American news coverage is too often far more sensational than informative.

Yesterday we arrived back in Venice uncertain but hopeful that the driving service I had arranged would work out as we expected. While the driver had changed (we were promised Zoran but got, instead, Marko), the car was there at the port as promised, my name prominently taped to the side of the white van. Marko was delightful, a Slovenian who speaks five languages, he stepped in for Zoran at the last minute, and we were happy that he did. The drive took us through beautiful scenery in first Italy, then Slovenia, and, finally, Austria, until we arrived at our Danube facing Hilton (ah, to have the predictable amenities of a Hilton hotel after two weeks without them! ;) and spent the next several hours marveling at the views, walking a few kilometers up the Danube to a music festival at the foot of the bridge and then back again, and collapsing into our beds after midnight (yes, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are already much on display) for a much deserved night sleep.

The day trip service I discovered wound up being a wonderful addition to our vacation. Instead of killing the day waiting to travel by train from Venice to Vienna (while saddled down with a bunch of suitcases in a city that wouldn't make a few hour stroll with such suitcases a viable solution), we got to start our trek as soon as we debarked. Marko was there at 9:45 a.m. and off we went, on our timetable. First, the opportunity to interact with someone like Marko, who was born in Slovenia when it was Yugoslavia and told us the obligatory lessons each child must learn are how to swim and how to ski, was invaluable. While Dana and I initially cringed when he explained that Slovenia didn't experience the strife Bosnia did because they are "ethnically clean" (nearly 99% Catholic), we quickly came to appreciate what Daniel dubbed as Marko's kind eyes, his erratic but always interesting snippets about the places through which we were traveling (we passed through areas known for the production of salami, wine and beer, and learned about the devastating freeze that paralyzed his home city a few years ago).

Additionally, the extra time we picked up by using this service allowed us to plan an excursion to Ljubljana (prounounced Lube e ana), a Slovenian city so charming and devoid of tourists (at least American ones :) that we knew we were having an exceptional and rare experience, exploring the castle, happening upon an open air market, eating at a cafe along the Ljubjana river. At one point, Daniel declared that he wanted to move there. The entire excursion only addes two hours to our final arrival time in Vienna and would never have been possible had we traveled another way. We will use this same service from Vienna to Prague tomorrow, and then Prague to Salzburg later in the week, for the last stop on our epic holiday before we head to Munich, Manchester and then home, while Maddie enters three weeks of exciting exchanges with people from all over the world. I will, of course, let you know if the other discovered cities along our way are as worthwhile as Ljuljana was.

Sunrise over Venice, as the ship returned to its original port

Sunflowers were everywhere!

Slovenia's version of the love bridge; having been ruled by Rome and Austria before becoming Yugoslavia, and, ultimately, Slovenia.. there is lots going on here in terms of culture and history