Today I need to see about getting the hotel to mail these post cards for us, and then I believe we’re going to try to take in a church service. The St. Paul’s Anglican church within walking distance offers services in English. We’d like to be able to have a delayed check-out at the hotel, but I’m not sure if it would be possible. We don’t leave for the boat until 1pm or so, and our boarding time for the boat is 3pm. But if checkout is at 11am, we’re going to have to figure out some way to fill that time.
A couple times this morning, I was able to hear church bells.
The front desk lady did not want to let us stay extra time, probably because I didn’t ask in the right way. She said a lot of people were getting off cruises and heading to the hotel, and they couldn’t hold rooms for people preparing to get on cruises.
At breakfast we encountered Shane and Mason already in the breakfast room. Shane had managed to secure extra time, he’s truly an expert at asking for and getting things. When the lady came around to check our room number for the breakfast, we asked about an extension to 11:30 and she granted it.
Shane and Mason decided to head to the Anglican church service with us as well, so we set off at 9:35. It was a longer walk than I had remembered to get over there. The morning was beautiful and pleasant, but we got sweaty after a long hoofing over to the church building.
The service was full, although the church was a bit small. Many people were part of the service. There was a choir that wore choir robes, a couple acolytes, and the priest. It was interesting to hear the English accents, or Scotish in the case of the choir director. The church has the oldest pipe organ in Greece. This may not be that impressive of a statistic because the predominant Orthodox church I don’t believe uses instrumentation beyond the singing/chanting of the priests.
The service was enjoyable. It was pleasant to see people presumably mostly from the British Commonwealth, worshiping together.
Most of the liturgy was familiar language, although nearly all the music was different from what we are used to in our church. There was meant to be a social hour afterward, but we had to leave right before communion to make it back to our hotel to check out.
We successfully checked out and dropped our baggage in the breakfast room of the hotel. Then Shannon and I dropped down to the ice cream cafe outside. The tables said in english that they were only for self-service customers, so I bought the world’s most expensive and rather mediocre affogato. The others came out and joined us for a bit, and Shane and Mason went into the AB store to get some stuff, then Shannon went in there as well.
We set off for lunch to a place Mason had been reading about, called Kapsa. It was about a 10 minute walk away from the hotel. The menu was Greek food again, which I enjoyed, but which Shannon was getting a bit tired of. I had the pork souvlaki skewers and and she had the chicken souvlaki skewers. The fries at this place were the best I’ve had so far in Greece.
On the way back, the ladies did a bit of shopping. Back at the hotel, it was time to board the van down to the port.
Our driver Dimitrios didn’t have a whole lot of English, but our goodwill ambassador Shane managed to engage him on a variety of topics, and he was very friendly. A basketball game had been played in Greece the previous night with 50,000 attendees.
We arrived at the port around 2:30, and were ushered up to the luggage drop off line, and into the check in, even though it was before our designated time. The process of getting on the boat was quick and efficient. There was a security screening similar to going onto an airplane. It seemed to be only about 30 minutes between arrival at the port and getting into our room.
The Scarlet Lady is a very modern boat, so a lot of the furnishings seem minimalist to me, and almost IKEA inspired. I’m not sure I’m in love with that, but we’ll try to be good sports about it. We had to watch a safety briefing video, then report to muster stations. Shannon and I then explored the 7th deck a bit. We got a pretzel and cheese that seemed to be basically frozen microwave tier, not terrible but nothing special.
All of our baggage had arrived by the time we got back to the room. Shannon’s had in fact been here before we left, but mine had arrived as well. Shannon got us all unpacked, with all the clothes hung up and various little metal hooks magnetically stuck to the walls. She also got us set up with a fan and such.
At 5:30 the ship hosts a sail away party, which mostly consists of people jostling to get free champagne like hogs waiting for the trough to be slopped. We enjoyed the free champagne and then it was time to head to the ship’s steakhouse, The Wake, for dinner.
We had a 6:15 reservation and were able to pretty much get seated immediately. I had a small and rather unimpressive bone marrow as a “starter.” Shannon got a wedge salad that was really just a heart of romaine with blue cheese and bacon on top. The real star of the starters was the bread with herb butter. Delicious! I got a hanger steak, which is apparently some type of loin, and mushrooms for a side. The portion was smaller than I expected, but it was good. They’ll definitely bring you more of anything you ask for as well. My dessert was a lemon cheesecake, that was a ball of cheesecake with a lemon shell exterior made to look like a lemon. Shannon and I also shared a cappuccino which was really pretty good. That set us back $5 on our ship scrip.
Shane had signed us up for trivia, and also a magic show, but I think we’re going to miss both. The trivia was going before we even finished dinner. The magic show is at 10, and it’s 9:36 while I’m typing this. Then the final event of the night is the pajama party from 11pm until “late” although I doubt I’ll be out very late.
We looked at some of the shops on deck 6, all of which are selling high end luxury goods. I hope we won’t be buying anything. We then came back to the cabin. Shannon is relaxing in the hammock out on the balcony, and I took a shower then set down to finish typing this travelogue.
We did manage to rally to go out to the pajama party. We are discovering that the cruise app hypes up exclusivity and acts like if you don’t get somewhere early, you’re not going to get in. Shannon and I were there too early. Later on, Shane arrived. Mason was sleeping and Lisa was feeling a bit off.
It was a pajama party, so naturally there was a pajama party contest. The hosts declared the two participants in the contest to have tied. I couldn’t really see them, but one I think was a guy that had bought a red leather hat from the shops on board, which was reminiscent of the one Vito from the Sopranos was wearing somewhere in season 6. They passed out peanut butter cookies as a sweet treat at the end, and after an hour, Shannon and I were ready to head back to go to bed.