Mediterranean Cruise

 The day before we got on our cruise, we rented a car and headed up to Andorra, a small country in the Pyrenees nestled between Spain and France that is basically a huge ski resort in the winter and a chance to prep for the Tour de France in the summer. It was really beautiful and I loved having the opportunity to drive in Spain!! 

Our first stop was Mykonos. It was windmills, stray cats, fresh Mediterranean salads, blue doors for fishermen, green doors for farmers and red doors for everyone else.

Our stateroom on the boat was surprisingly large. It turned out to be a handicap access room, which I highly recommend. Bill and I won the quarterback challenge (one of us with skill and the other with luck and some bending of the rules.)

Kusadasi (Koosh-ah-DAH-sah) was a happy surprise! Turkey was incredible. The port town was cute with some fun shopping (not anything too overwhelming) and we did the tour to Ephesus, which was incredible (more stray dogs than cats this time). We found Dr. Pepper Zero at the exit shops from Ephesus and it was the ONLY place we saw it the whole time away. It was also timely because I was definitely in the throes soda withdrawal.

Next stop was Istanbul. Bill got more pictures of our driving tour of the city. I'll have to get some of his. We loved Istanbul. We didn't go to the grand bazaar (probably for the best), but we did go to the spice market which was still completely overwhelming. Our tour guide was a bit of an old curmudgeon, but we loved exploring the city on our own and enjoyed the non-tour guides :) Cats won here - even more than Mykonos. Everyone in the city just takes care of all the city cats. They wander in and out of cafés, get fed and scratched and it's really sweet.

We were in Istanbul from Friday afternoon until noon on Saturday, so we did get off the boat again early Saturday to find a café for breakfast and wi-fi. Nobody minded that there was a cat on one of the tables. It was a slow morning anyway.

Next, we were off to Santorini, Greece. It is a desert island made from volcanic action with 3 small volcanoes sitting in it's bay, the most recent eruption of one of them was in the 1950s. We took a driving tour, and then explored the capital city of Fira on our own.

Our second to final stop was the port of Katacolon, where we took a bus to see Olympia, the site of the very first Olympic games in 776 BC. I wasn't impressed that women and slaves were not allowed in the training grounds or arena. I'm too much of a modern woman. We've come a long way, baby!

It was a very hot tour, so we were glad that we chose the tour where you get to swim in the Ionian Sea afterward! That was really fun too.

Our final stop was Rome, but I have a separate post for that. There were good and bad things about the cruise.

Bad: You do get herded around in big groups a lot. You deal with a lot of different people who are all a little bit on the edge. Celebrity cruises wanted to upsale everything and was constantly hyping up what a great cruise line they are.

Good: Great food that you have easy access to. We had to walk at least .5 mile to every meal. Not so bad when you're eating a lot! We did lots of stair stepping (on purpose!) Traveling with access to a pool, food, your bed and constant entertainment is a great way to travel! Viewing each city from its port was really fun too.