Another lovely day on this cruise. I’ve been staying away from the computer and just enjoying the cruise. Have yet to actually meet Jan but we’ve managed to locate each others rooms – perhaps tonight at the cocktail party for gold and platinum members?

Ephesus was wonderful We took a tour from the ship called “Ephesus with an Expert” The expert was an archeologist who had worked on the site for 40 years and quite proudly showed us some of “his” discoveries complete with the stories behind the work. We found mosaic tiles and ceramic tiles (one with the footprint of a dog) just lying around. He had excavated two of the mosaics in the terrace houses and so we got to spend a lot of time inside the houses looking at the mosaics and the frescoes. The only slight issue with the day was that there were literally thousands of people there and it felt more like opening day at Fenway rather than some ancient archeological site. A true international cast of visitors – Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Turks and of course Americans and Canadians.

We went back at night for the concert – a memorable evening. It was held in the Odeon and almost half the ship joined in this excursion. There was a lovely breeze and the chamber ensemble played for about 75 minutes. There was music from Vivaldi, Bach, Faure, Dvorak, Brahms, Boccherini and Mozart. They played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik which was the first piece of music my father taught me – I could almost hear him humming along. He would have just loved this whole experience.

The next day we were in Rhodes – along with about ten other cruise ships and many thousands of people. We went to Lindos – there was actually a human traffic jam climbing up to the top which made it much easier to do the climb as you only move about 2 feet per minute. We wandered around the old town on our own but thought we would see more at the visit next week. We received a note today from the Captain saying they had switched our schedule for next week’s visit with our Kos/Bodrum stop so that we would be the only ship in Rhodes. The Seven Seas Society party was Wednesday night and we had a pleasant dinner with Engelbert the hotel director, Kadri (one of the housekeeping officers) and three other couples. They had a dance party in the atrium after the show which was fun.

Yesterday was Santorini. We took the cable car up to Thira and then went to the cathedral to see the murals and visited the museum to see frescoes from Akrotiri. We hired a taxi to Oia and just wandered around taking pictures and visiting the galleries and shops. We found our way to a hidden restaurant with a terrace perched on the edge overlooking the entrance to the Caldera and drank some surprisingly good local Santorini white wine with lunch. We agreed we should come back just to stay in Santorini for a week.

Today was Nafplion and once again we went out on our own. We took a taxi up to the Palamidi fortress – great views – Jim had the bright idea to walk down all 900 something steps to get back to town. Let’s just say it was one of those occasions when a small marital dispute is inevitable (I’ve had multiple knee surgeries on both knees including one ACL repair on each knee). Lunch (with wine) in town restored harmony and an hour of rest with ice on both knees (Darren the butler found plastic bags and lots of ice) has returned the pain level to tolerable. I might not be able to do a lot of dancing tonight though…..

Tomorrow we are going to take the subway into Athens and go exploring on our own. The internet is still too slow to attempt picture posting. I’ve resized some of the better pictures to low resolution and small file size and tried to upload to picasa, smugmug and photobucket and all three time out before I manage to upload anything. I will try tomorrow before we head into Athens – hopefully not too many people will be on the internet and there will be enough bandwidth.

Off to finish getting ready for tonight – the cocktail party and then dinner at Signatures.

Mary Ellen