Day 7- Cruise Ship

We thought we were over the jetlag, but unfortunately, that did not seem to be the case. We awoke at 4 am, ready for breakfast and to begin our day. When we realized that going back to sleep was not going to happen, Matt and I decided to call home to our parents. After being in a foreign country with very few Americans and no familiar faces for a few days, hearing their voices was comforting.

When the time for breakfast finally arrived, we made our way down to the first floor for a repeat of yesterday's buffet. More cruisers had arrived the night before and our thoughts of being the youngest people on the boat were confirmed. After breakfast we returned to our room to pack up for the cruise. Since their is no weight or liquid limits for the cruise, this round of packing went much smoother. Our 4 am wake up was wearing down on us, so we took a quick nap before we had to check out.

After check-out, we had about an hour and a half before our bus left to take us to the port. We waited in the lobby of the airport with all of our luggage piled up. While walking around in Athens yesterday, we somewhat chuckled at the tour groups walking around the Acropolis. They all had to stand in a group, follow the tour guides, wait for people to rejoin the group, and just flat out looked like tourists, something we've tried not to look like.  In ancient Athens, we were able to walk around at our own pace and felt a great deal of adventurerous freedom.  As we sat in the lobby waiting for the bus, Matt had images of our group becoming that tour group that we scoffed at earlier. Increasing our apparent hypocricy, our Catholic Answers group is a smaller tour group within the larger tour group of everyone on the cruise ship, so we are a specialized tour group!  If we had to be in a tour group, which is the most efficient way of visiting all of the foreign places, we'd rather be a part of the Catholic Answers tour group which consists of 90 or so people, mainly from North America although one couple is from Guam. While there are various activities on the ship, we have our own itenerary which includes our own Catholic Answers receptions and lectures discussing the places we will be visiting from a truly Catholic perspective.

Matt has noted in previous posts about the craziness of traffic in Athens. The roads are narrow with sharp turns and the Greeks drive without much respect for the white lines or the speed limit. With this image of Greek drivers in my mind, I was somewhat fearful of our ride to the port aboard a large bus. From the window of the bus, I watched how we drove inches away from cars and motorcycles, amazed at how unperturbed the other drivers were. Upon arrival at the port, we had to go through passport and security checks. While signing in at the Holland America desk, we were informed that they would be taking our passports away from us and returning them at an unspecified day or location. I felt helpless and vulnerable. I knew that we were going to be aboard a boat with Americans in a hotel-like environment, but these fine attributes to the cruise do not take away from the fact that we are in a foreign country and we will be traveling to countries where Christians and Americans are not joyfully welcomed. But, we did not have a choice in the matter, so we handed over the most important items we had. 

We then took our first steps aboard the place we would call home for the next 14 days. Our room is much more spacious than our Athens hotel room, the only drawback being the lack of outlets. We have one American outlet and a Greek outlet. Since our luggage had not yet been delivered to the room, we decided to explore the ship and find food. We quickly found the buffet style lunch restaurant. Upon walking in, the first image flashing through our minds was gluttony. Before us stood an all-you-can-eat buffet with a waiting staff ready to get us anything we wanted. Of course, there are no price tags on the food or drink since we've already paid for it. I almost felt as if it was too much pampering. We're supposed to be on a pilgrimage, which typically involves some sort of self-denial: something hard to do when all the food one would want is at one's fingertips. Regardless, our hunger led us to select salads, beef with gravy, mint flavored orzo, some fruit, and chocolate pudding. The buffet is nice in that some food from each of the food groups may be picked, including the sweets food group. We didn't particularly enjoy the mint-flavored orzo and the pudding tasted like nursing home pudding. We're discovering that the food is sort of hit and miss.

After lunch, we came back to our room where our luggage had arrived. So we began to unpack, placing our clothes into drawers and hanging our shirts and pants on hangers, making it much easier to pick out clothes to wear in the morning.  Soon thereafter, we had a mandatory life-jacket drill where an alarm sounded and we had to put on our life jackets in the room and walk to the deck to stand underneath the emergency lifeboats.  After everyone was acounted for, we were able to go back to our room and get ready for dinner.

The dinners on the ship are either casual dress or formal dress.  Tonight's was casual dress which is somewhat like business casual.  Dinner is in a separate dining room from lunch where eight of us are at a table and are served by a waiter.  He handed us the menu which had appetizers, soups/salads, and entrees.  Again, the nice thing about the menu is that there are no prices next to the food, so we can pick whichever we like.  Right in the middle of dinner,the ship started to leave the Greek port of Pireaus.  The engines of the ship caused everything in the dining room to shake like it was an earthquake, since the dining room is located in the aft of the ship directly over the engines.  The wait staff just did their job as normal.  Once we got up to our cruising speed (about 20mph) the shaking stopped.  The rocking motions of the ship, however, just begun.  Neither Matt nor I have been on a ship like this, so feeling the boat sway back and forth from turning and just being on water was new and interesting.  Matt got a bowl of fruit, tomato basil soup, and some pork with apple chutney and broccoli.  I got salad and braised chicken with mashed potatoes and spinach.  All of the food at dinner was really good.  We then got a dessert menu and ordered the raspberry chocolate cake which was awesome.  Having dinner on a moving ship reminded Matt and I of the lunch we had with her family on the Ohio River cruise just a couple days before our wedding.

Immediately after dinner, there was a Catholic Answers reception which was an orientation of sorts- getting to meet the speakers and talk about some of the logistics of the upcoming excursions.  This was held in a room on the top deck so we could really feel the swaying of the ship.  Whenever we stand up from our chairs, it sometimes feels like we're just standing up after being spun around.  I suppose we'll get used to it after spending two weeks on the ship.  Afterwards, we went to rent a movie for the night, but didn't really find anything that was worth the $3 rental fee.  After such a busy day, we ended up going to bed around 11:00pm.