Apologies for two weeks of nothing! At first we were excited about two weeks of reliable internet, but alas, the ship’s internet was slow and it kept dropping me when I tried to upload pictures. Some of the most recent entries took me hours to write, post, lose, rewrite, save, upload, lose, retry, etc. Grrrr.
We are currently in Athens, at the airport hotel that is literally across the street from the ticket desk. Thankfully we are far enough from the runway to not hear the planes, and wonderfully close enough to guarantee no stress in getting to the airport. Andy walked over while I was napping and checked out where we check in, and we even went over later to get lunch! Thankfully, this hotel has great internet (expensive, but great), so I am hoping to get some posts up, as well as deal with a serious backlog of e-mail! We fly out of Athens at 8, arrive in London 4 hours later, spend 5 hours finding our way to our other terminal (its supposed to take an hour just to change terminals!) and drinking tea, and then we arrive home at 4:30 pm Seattle time. That would make it over 18 hours of travel. Woo hoo!
Anyway, on Tuesday, Sept. 18th, we had our last Greek breakfast and took the metro out to the port of Piraeus. We thought it would be an easy connection to the ship, but we had no idea that the port was HUGE. Puts Seattle’s to shame. We walked for an hour to get to the other side of the port (luggage in tow and hot sun on our backs) before we arrived at our ship, the Rotterdam. We were greeted by a long line of fudgies. Sigh. Two weeks of people who don’t read signs, who panic when they have to think…. were we ready for this? We decided we were, so we joined the line and did all the fun paperwork/customs/security stuff.
We boarded the ship and were immediately impressed at how large and opulent the ship was. Especially after some of the places we had been in, we were stoked to be in a nice place with familiar menu items and flushing toilets. Our room was decent-sized, considering that it is a cruise stateroom, and we were surprised by appetizers and chocolate covered strawberries waiting in our room from my parents and Jeanne and Nathan. We settled into our room (the first time we actually unpacked our suitcases and used drawers in three weeks) and then explored the ship. We had read that the spa appointments go fast, so we went straight there and made appointments for the next day. Afterwards, we checked out the many lounges and restaurants, as well as the shops, casino, pools, library, and other areas on board. There are Purell stations everywhere, and you have to use it to enter the dining room, board and leave the ship, etc. It was nice, since many of the people on board coughed like they had tuberculosis and it made us nervous.
There was the lifeboat drill and the ship photographer snapped a great picture of us in our lifejackets. We bought several of the portraits on board, which we will scan in and post once we are home. Promise. We set sail at 6 pm, and Andy and I watched the ship leave the port from the aft pool and bar area. It was warm and the water was calm, and we were very excited to be on this leg of our trip! While waiting for dinner (we had the last seating, 8:30), we played Scattergories in the library, which became a progressive game throughout our cruise, which I creamed Andy in each time. Which is ok, as he kicks my tail in Skip-Bo and anything highly strategic.
At dinner we met all of our waiters and servers that we would see each night for two weeks. The dining room was very fancy, and each dinner was four courses (appetizer, soup/salad, entree, and dessert). The staff is largely Indonesian, so learning some of their names was fun. The service was excellent and all of the staff we encountered on board were polite and courteous. We saw the welcome aboard show that night, and while we braced ourselves for the typical cruise cheesiness, by in large the show was well done, with talented dancers, singers, and musicians. It promised to be an exciting trip!
The Adventures of Team Samuel 
