Nov 2 – Mykonos, Greece

meze and ouzo

coming into Mykonos - no rain yet!

Weather – 19º, sunny sailing in, then cloudy, then torrential,  then sun in the afternoon

Steps – 9,310

The rain finally caught up with us. Sailing into Mykonos it was actually sunny, so sunny in fact that we had to close the curtains. That did not last.

35 of us boarded the bus, some with rain jackets, hats and umbrellas and others with no rain gear AT ALL! We hoped we would be the fools with our rain gear…nope…we were happy to be decked out when the skys opened. We got from the bus, to the taverna, to the church, to the

monastery

church’s museum, to a short wander around the tiny town, and to another
taverna before the deluge began. It absolutely poured. Luckily for us we were already settled with an Alfa beer (€5, cash only) in front of each of us.

cats are even in the church

I mentioned that there were 35 of us on the bus…this is waaaaay too many for a Regent tour. We find out later that the another group of the same tour had 21! Whaaaat!?! Why on earth is there 35 on one tour and 21 on the next. Anyway…we aren’t not surprised…we know excursions and excursion management is a weak point for Regent, but still…not good.

alter

This tour is a 2-manner. Meaning it’s a bit strenuous or the steps are challenging – uneven, slippery etc. There is a guy with OXYGEN! I’m not sure what he did for a lot of the tour, but oxygen is something we rarely see on tours. His wife had just had a new
knee, but I think he presented the biggest challenge between the 2 of them. There are plenty of tours that are less strenuous – not sure why they picked this one.

Mykonos town

The tour started with a panoramic tour of Mykonos with its whitewashed buildings.

After about 30 min of the bus negotiating the very narrow and winding streets, we arrived at Ano Mera village. Here (at 930AM) we had ouzo and meze.) The meze was easier to identify than the last meze we had, but not as exciting.

beer in the rain

The 16th-century Panagia Tourliani Monastery is small but beautiful. It is similarly decorated to the ones we visited in Lesbos – to me these are more churches than they are monasteries. There was also a small but impressive museum with artifacts from the monastery.

monastery

On the way back to ship we were supposed to stop for a walking tour of Mykonos town, we had pretty much decided to blow that off because of the weather, but as we got closer, the weather seemed to break, so we stuck with it. Only 12 of us out of the original 35 remained.

5 churches - Panagia Paraportiani

We wandered along with Sarah, our guide, as she told us this and that about the old town. We walked along narrow, whitewashed streets apparently laid

monastery museum

out in a labyrinth pattern to confuse attacking
pirates, saw windmills, and stopped for a traditional Greek bread called Koulouri Thessalonikis – very much like a bagel covered in sesame seeds. There were many, many churches – some very tiny and some privately owned.

Aphrodite's boobies

After the tour we decided to stop for calamari and wine – the calamari was fine, but I expected seaside calamari in Greece to knock my socks off a bit more. The location along the sea was lovely.

The photo of Aphrodite's boobies - 2 hills (everyplace has to have some kind of

Koulouri Thessalonikis

reference to breasts it seems) shows how much rain there was at one point.

Chris is looking for a job

Luckily we were on the bus at this point.

Mykonos sea side village

yet another church

Mykonos street

little Venice

Mykonos street

calamari, wine and the ship in the distance

windmills

Nov 1 – Athens (Piraeus), Greece

Odeon at the Acropolis

we missed virtually all of it!

Weather – 18º, periods of heavy rain (not
when we were outside!), also sun

Steps – 8,713

Other than cruise day #1, today is the second-best day on a cruise – the turnaround day. That’s the day most of the passengers disembark and others embark. Turnaround day is the second-best day when you are staying on for the

next leg. No suitcases out last night, no flights today, no up early and stressed that you aren’t making it to the airport…that can wait another week for us.

Caryatids 

me at the Acropolis

Often on turnaround days, Regent will arrange a tour the remaining guests. We are welcome to stay on the ship, but there is also a tour. We were told there needed to be a minimum of 20 participants and today there were 24…were supposed to be 24. 4 decided to stay on the ship despite signing up for the tour. This is a danger of offering included excursions – people blow them off and don’t tell anyone.

From the port of Piraeus (the port for Athens) to the Acropolis is a 20 min drive. Technically, 2 separate cities, but they blend into each other.

temple of Hephaestus

We spend about 2 hours at the Acropolis with a guide. We were here last in 2008 – the Acropolis infrastructure is more developed than it was then. Today was

Chris at the Acropolis

busy. I’m not sure how busy it is compared to other October or November days, but today as it is the first day of the month…entrance is free. 

Of the 20 people on the tour, only 15 stuck with the guide until the end of the time at the Acropolis. It is steep climb, but more arduous are the uneven footing. Much of it is marble steps, which is also a

Athens modern Olympic monument

reason to be thankful we didn’t get rained on…slippery steps. The pathways are also chucks of ancient marble, worn very smooth.

There were weather warnings for Athens today…heavy rainfall. We missed being

Dromeas (The Runner)

rained on, other than a bit getting from the ship to the bus. It also rained when we were driving. We were extremely lucky.

On the way back to the ship from the Acropolis, we had about an hour of a panoramic tour of Athens – panoramic tours are done entirely from the bus.

lots of photos!

Athens struck me as more of a regular big city and not particularly tourist heavy. There were lots of tourists of course around the Acropolis, but on the regular streets, there seemed like mostly regular citizens.

We drove past the parliment, a monument to the modern Olympics, a cool sculpture made with thousands of pieces of jagged glass, and The Academy of Athens among other things. Although my favourite

Socrates & Plato at the Academy

excursions are walking tours, panoramic tours let you see many thngs quickly. like ours did today.

Oct 31 – Santorini, Greece

Weather – 20º, partly cloudy

we are here

Steps – 4,133…woah!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Santorini is one of the most unique places I’ve ever visited. It is a small island overlooking a submerged caldera – one of the times we visited here, we swam in the caldera.

Today, though, we stayed on board. It is an ordeal accessing the island and then getting back to the ship, and we’ve been there done that. The main town is perched on the top of a cliff that is accessed by cable car. If we had been going on an excursion we would have had access with the tour, but we would still have had to take the cable car back down to the tender at the end of the tour.

Santorini in the distance

So, to get to the town (when not on a tour), one needs to take the tender, take a cable car (€10), and then take the cable car again (another €10). There were 2 other ships in port today, meaning the cable car would be busy…lined up. We’ve experienced this before and didn’t feel the need to do it today. Apparently, Santorini limits the number of tourists in town each day to 8,000. This ship only has 800 people on it, but the other 2 boats are big…2,000 and 3,000.

I remember the town being very charming, but having visited a couple of times, not worth the hassle. Plus, we’ve been on the go a lot this cruise, so felt a day on the ship was in order.

view from the pool

Staying on the ship was a great decision. We lazed in the room for a bit in the morning and were at the pool by about 1030. It was a lovely day for pool sitting looking at Santorini.

zig-zag up to the town

After a bit of lunch and more pool time, we headed back to the room for napping, reading, and blogging.

A perfect day!

Today is the last day for the first leg of the cruise. Tomorrow the majority of those who have been on with us will disembark. That means very little in the way of after dinner entertainment.

scary desserts

However, as it is Halloween, there was an Abba Halloween dance party. Regent loooooooves the Abba dance parties (or the Beatles, but maybe they’ve moved

ship is decorated

on from the Beatles.) The band and the singers and dancers set up in the ship’s atrium and people dance all around the 2-level atrium. People love it, so… good for Regent. As I said a while back about one of the guest entertainers, I think people love the event, not necessarily Abba. Regent could do a Taylor Swift dance party and people would probably love it just as much.

Oct 30 – Kuşadasi, Turkey

Weather – 15º, sunny

Temple of Artemes of Ephesia

Steps – 8,755

Kuadasi (pop. 130,000) is a large resort town on Turkey’s Aegean coast. We have been here before, so don’t feel the need to repeat visits to the main sights of the area. Because of that, we picked a tour that was a bit more obscure.

Food is the highlight of the tour. We start with a 45 min drive to Selcuk, the city where the main sights such as Ephesus and the house of the Virgin Mary are. As usual, on the way there, the guide, Sarah, tell us all about the area and what we will see and do on the tour.

Welcomm to Kusadasi!

We first had a 10 min visit to the archeological site of the Temple of Artemis of Ephesia. There is very little uncovered here, mostly one large column. Sarah told us all everything she had to tell us on the bus, so 10 min was ample.

Then we drove past Ephesus, saw the ubiquitous Turkish shoeshine guy, and saw the statue of the Virgin Mary presented by the Vatican.

nothing better!

St John the Evangelist burial site

Lunch was the main event – we started with a meze plater of vegetables, a feta dip, bread, and roasted eggplant. Then we had grilled meat skewers, meat balls, rice and salad. Dessert was a caramel
type pudding. This was accompanied by beer and wine. It all was good, but not great. I’m not usually hard to please in the food dept, but I was feeling a bit meh about the whole thing. We ate with some great people though and that was fun. We sat in the outdoor area at the front of the restaurant which was lovely. A cat kept me company the whole lunch. Cats are everywhere again!

St John the Evangelist burial site

After the tour we thought we might have an Iskender, (a Turkish fast food type meal with grilled meat, with bread, and a tomato and yogurt sauce), that I have had in Turkey before and LOVE, but I was way too full!

shoe shine guy

We also thought we might find a place to smoke a hookah…I didn’t see one hookah the entire time we were in Istanbul or today! There used to be hookah smoking at every single bar/restaurant. Now if  someone wants to offer hookah at their establlishment, they need a special licence that allows smoking indoors - basically it needs to be a private club. Probably a good thing – it’s hardly good for you, but it is fun once every 5 years or so when we’re in a hookah smoking area, so we were kinda bummed.

lunch meze

The Kusadasi waterfront area was bustling. We wandered a bit thinking we might stop for a beer, but just weren’t feeling it, so we headed back to the boat for a late afternoon sit on the balcony.

Tonight is the second last night of the cruise – that means Krew Kapers, the crew talent show. I try not to miss it. No one is every particularly good, but it’s fun and I like to support them.

The after-dinner show tonight was a one-woman show put on by one of the ship’s entertainment team’s vocalists – Floor, from the Netherlands. She

Vingin Mary monument

was great. We knew her voice was great from when she performed with the whole group, and once again she proved that. We chatted with Floor a bit earlier in the cruise, so it was nice to see her on the stage. She was every bit as good or better than some of the guest entertainers.

lunch friend

Mom – In fact, the association of lesbianism and Lesbos originated with the Sappho story, or so we were told.

Stacey – good point, anyone can actually come for 3 days of peace and meditation at no cost.

Krew Kapers

Oct 29 – Mytilini (Lesbos), Greece

back in Greece

Weather – 15º, some rain, but mostly

Taxiarchis monestery

when we were on the bus

Steps – 7,438

Mytilene (pop. 60,000) is the capital and main port of the Greek island of Lesbos (pop. 84,000). We first visited in 2008 when we toured an ouzo factory.

The ship didn’t arrive until 11, so we thought we’d have a morning to laze…nope. We were invited to a breakfast for frequent Regent passengers. It was nice, but nothing is better than lazing in bed, then taking the few steps to the balcony for a morning of blogging and reading.

chocolate fountain for breakfast

After breakfast we booked a cruise for Christmas 2027. This will be on Regent’s newest ship which will be exciting. As usual, we booked the lowest category of room – there are rooms much bigger and that come with a butler, but about half of the rooms are more or less the same size (about 350 sq feet) but have different locations on the ship, which is what impacts category and cost.

Taxiarchis monestery

We don’t care one bit about location...much, we don’t want to be under any public area…no restaurant, no bar, no pool…only other rooms, public spaces tend to be loud. The ship location that impacts room category is proximity to the

Taxiarchis monestery

centre of the ship on a higher floor, so as rooms are
closer to the middle of the ship and to the top decks the category and cost increases. An increase in category means more $$$. The room we
chose is at the back on the lowers floor. However…location on the ship can sometimes affect balcony size, the room we chose is a G category, which is second from the bottom category, but it seems to have a GIANT balcony! Like 4 times the size of balconies we are used to on the older Regent ships and double or triple what we have now.

Greek granny polishing St. Michael glass

We feel like this will be figured out and will eventually be categorized higher, but we are locked in. We experienced this phenomenon before on Regent…a large balcony off the back of the ship (bliss) that was a basic room but was eventually categorized to a penthouse.

so many cats

Mitilini is a tender port – when the ship anchors in the harbour and small boats ‘tender’ us to shore. This is always a pain – it was charming and exciting the first few times we did it and can be when you aren’t with a group trying to get to an excursion. Today we were trying to get to an excursion. Tendering is a whole lot of sit around and wait in the theatre (the usual excursion meeting point) until there is an available tender.

Loukoumades 

This is where I think Regent fails a bit. We were supposed to anchor at 11, and tours were supposed to start going out at 1120. Obviously, they know how long it takes to start the tender operations, but people who were supposed to leaving the ship at 1120, didn’t until closer to noon. We were supposed to meet at 1155 and didn’t leave until about 1230.

St Raphael monestery

This doesn’t affect the excursion at all, a Regent excursion that is. Independent excursions are another matter, but we never do those. No Regent (or other cruise line for that matter) excursion will ever, ever not get you back to the ship and if something happens like a bus breaks down (been there!) the ship will never leave without you.

St Raphael monestery

We visited 2 monasteries and one taverna today. Travelling between all three took us all over the island of Lesbos. It was a perfect mix of seeing cultural sites, tasting local flavours, seeing the landscape, and how people live.

Of course we were with a guide, Mimi today, who told us many things at the sites and on the bus. I occasionally hear people moan about how much talking the guide did, or how the guide should have said less…PARDON ME!?! How else are you going to learn about where you are you ding-dong?!? I have never once thought a guide should have said less – sheesh!

St Raphael alter with hanging lights

Our first visit was to the fortress-like monastery of Taxiarchis (Greek for archangel or commander), dating back to

where 12 yr old saint Irene died

the 10^th century. St Michael the Archangel and St Gabriel are the patrons. It was interesting to hear Mimi tell us about the offerings people make of sliver items that have been used to cover a life size (of bigger) image of St Michael. Apparently in the Orthodox religion images aren’t to be 3D, so none of the iconography are sculptures. Exceptions can be made of course, like the one of St. Michael here, which is mostly flat – a relief image.

The church walls and ceiling was completely covered with images of saints. No photos were allowed in the church, but they have a great web site if you want to check it out. https://www.taxiarhismantamadou.gr/

St Michael and St Gabriel must also be the patrons saints of cats…they rule this place!

Lesbos landscape

We had time for a snack of Loukoumades - Tim-Bit sized, deep-fried dough balls that are crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and soaked in hot honey syrup. These can be with or without chocolate drizzle…we had with. A plate of 8 were €4.

Then we drove about 30 minutes through narrow winding roads, along the coast, through tiny towns, past cow and sheep pastures. Cows and sheep aren’t roaming freely as they typically do here as there has been an outbreak of foot and mouth disease on Lesbos since March, the first occurrence in 25 years, so animals are kept with the same herds.

St Raphael monestery

We also saw the Lesbos refugee camp. Mimi didn’t give much information on the camp, but a quick google search doesn’t have much good to say. Not that any refugee camp is great, but this one seems particularly no-so-good.

The Saint Raphael monastery (12^th century) where we visited next, is a working monastery in so far as it has nuns living there. St Michael/ St Gabriel monastery was operational for celebrations, but not a day to day working monastery.

meze and ouzo

Did you know (I didn’t) the difference between a convent and a monastery? According to the interwebs…”a monastery is a secluded place where people live apart from the world for quiet prayer, while a convent is a home for religious workers who go out into the local community to serve’.

There are many relics at the St Raphaeli monastery including 2 pieces of St Raphael’s skull, which is one of the reasons it is a pilgrimage site. I always find relics a bit creepy, but if that’s what worshipers like…good for them.

Sappho 

Lastly, we found ourselves at a taverna for meze and ouzo. The Meze was a meat ball, a deep-fried feta/chic pea ball, tomatoes, and a couple of unidentifiable dips. Everything was OK, I missed olives and cheese. Most of the people around us ate and drank very little. In fact, the woman across from us didn’t even touch her ouzo, so we helped her out.

Mitilini waterfront

3 busses arriving back to the ship at a dock would be an ordeal, but 3 getting back onto a tender would be a zoo! We figured for our sanity we had to find someplace for a beer.

We wandered the town a bit and stopped for a Kea beer (€5 for a pint). The waterfront area is lined with bars and restaurants which at 5pm on a late October mid-week evening wasn’t exactly hopping, but I could see how it would later in the day and especially in summer. The captain was out for a walk at one point and stopped by for a chat.

We sat right by the Sappho (c. 620–550 BCE) sculpture. Mimi told us about her – she was a teacher of aristocratic women. She wrote poetry about the beauty of

beer and Sappho

women which let to her being the symbol of lesbian history and culture.

Mitilini by night

By the time we got back to the tender it was dark (one aspect of tendering that hasn’t lost its shine for me is tendering in the dark) and it wasn’t at all full – maybe 10 people including staff – so no ordeal at all. You know tendering operations are almost over when the shoreside supplies are on with you. The tender ride from Mitilini to the shore is about 10 minutes long, this is short, some places it can take up to half an hour.

the ship lit up. tendering back

ship's door open and ready for us

The rest of the evening was, predinner cocktail, dinner, Chris went to the casino, I went to the room. I read for about 30 seconds and passed out hard. These no nap days are killing me!