Saturday 24th October

d*** woke up feeling better & after breakfast we packed up & took a taxi to the station where we eventually managed to buy tickets to Venice. An uneventful journey but when we arrived we set out to look for the monorail to the basin for the ship but couldn't work out which one to take so we walked. It was about a 25min walk & it was quite warm but eventually we found it amongst 5 in the port. We joined the queue & were served quite rapidly when we were taken aside & questioned by the doctor re Dick’s health & why we had not got US visas. An officer sat us down at a computer to apply for entry permits & after a long hard go the first timed out before it could be paid & we had to repeat the whole process from scratch.

After 2 hours we got on the ship, Norwegian Spirit but then we didn’t know where to go. We had been given a cabin on the 6th deck in our papers with a porthole but much to our surprise, were re-allocated to one on the 11th deck with a balcony. Unfortunately the doctor wanted d*** to stay in the cabin until the morning so Jane went out to prospect food possibilities & d*** waited as told.

Sunday 25th October

The ship left at 1.00am. We got up & stood on our balcony as it went past St Mark’s square & left the lagoon.

After a good sleep & a very smooth passage we tried the 'Windows’ dining room for breakfast & then wandered around the ship on the 6th deck. By our standards it is huge but the movement & particularly the vibration & sound is minimal as it appears to glide through the water. The decor is a bit over the top in places but the crew are very friendly. The passenger mix is wide also probably Americans seem to dominate it but there are many Asians & to our surprise, there are a few children & young people.

At 10.00 we went to the Port lecture which was quite helpful although all the tours are at eye watering prices as are all the drinks etc. Later we went to our first Pub Quiz in a very crowded bar. Here we teamed up with Cindy who was standing beside us. To our surprise we were joint winners on 19/20 after a play off so we went off to celebrate with her. Cindy & her husband, Mike, are from Bakersfield in California & proved to be a very interesting couple as they had spent time working in several countries & Mike was a Marine Vietnam vet.

For dinner we offered to share a table with 4 other people, 2 from Yorkshire are farming & 2 from Alberta, Canada. Our discussions were wide ranging & it was great to hear how many common problems we all shared so the dinner was a real event.

Jane went to the show in the Stardust theatre, a large tiered auditorium but was not madly impressed.

Monday 26th October

At sea all day on the way to Greece. Travelling down the Adriatic we saw quite a few ships & were often is sight of cliffs & islands on the Croatian side. Had a go at 2 pub quizzes with little success, although we got something as runners up in the 2nd one.

d*** had a50 minute acupuncture session on his knees which was somewhat unnerving as the young Japanese practitioner said virtually nothing for the whole time & he didn’t see anything. The good news is that it seemed to help.

We decided to try a new eating venue on the 12th deck for lunch but it was a ‘works cafeteria’ style of operation & although the food was Ok it was very crowded & the self serve process was totally chaotic. In the evening after dinner we went to see the show which was loud, athletic & spectacular but left us both fairly cold. The band was great & the cast really worked at it but it wasn’t much to our taste.

Tuesday 27th October

Up very early at 6.00 with a very bright, nearly full, just setting moon, lighting our cabin over the outskirts of Piraeus, the port for Athens. The ship docked at 7 & we were having breakfast by then but we didn’t get off until about 8.30. We walked to catch a Hop-on- hop-off bus, with 3 to choose from & got our seniors tickets for €15 each to go into Athens.

The ride was quite interesting to us as although we had been there twice before it was always by train & we had seen nothing on the route. Piraeus is apparently the busiest passenger port in the world handling 19 million a year. This is because Greece has so many islands & there are hordes of ferries ranging from large car carriers to high speed passenger boats including several WA & Tasmanian built ones. The route passed through a mixture of streets & properties but the overall impression was of the seedy nature of much of it. Several streets had many boarded up shops & offices & we certainly wouldn’t have wanted to walk the streets after dark.

Eventually after completing the circuit we stopped off at the Acropolis Museum built in the late 2000s which contains artefacts discovered when excavating around the site of the Parthenon. It is truly a wonderful museum & the items are displayed & described in Greek & in English but the layout is a bit hard to follow. On the top floor a great short video on its history is shown but it would be better if this had been shown at the entry point, we felt.

We tried to get our wi-fi going in the terminal but without much success.