For those who just started following along, I recently re-discovered my old travel blog from my first trip to Europe in the summer of 2014. I wanted to share these entries with you, because it is amazing to look back and reminisce on that trip. [Side note - this was all before I was vegan, so if there is any confusion about that food I was eating, that's why.] Here was my seventh blog post from that trip.
August 5, 2014;
"We got into Athens at 7:00am today. We had a private tour booked that we found on trip advisor, so we met our tour guide outside of the ship at 8:00. He drove us around in a Mercedes, and took us to all the big spots in Athens.
We started by going to Acropolis, where we saw The Parthenon and ruins from 4,000 years ago. We spent about an hour there. It was extremely hot - probably about 95 degrees - and it was very humid. Next, we went to Panathenaic Stadium, where they hosted the first modern Olympic Games. We went to the Parliament Building, where we watched the changing of the guards ceremony. Then we drove up to the highest point in Athens that overlooked the entire city. We learned that 11 million people live in Greece, and 5 million of those people live in Athens, so almost half of the residents of Greece live in Athens. We also learned that there are 6,000 Greek Islands, but only 120 are inhabited.
Next, we went to a shopping area and had about an hour of free time. After buying some jewelry and souvenirs, we were very hungry, so our guide took us to a local, non-touristy restaurant. We ordered way too much food for the four of us, but it was very good and inexpensive. We were right near the temple of Zeus, so we stopped there for about 10 minutes. Then we drove along the shoreline and saw the beaches. We decided to cut our 8-hour tour short, because we were all very tired, and the heat wasn’t helping. We went back to the cruise ship after about 6 hours of our tour.
When we got back on the ship, Rachel and I took a 2 hour nap. We woke up around 5:00pm, when our cruise ship left port. We sat by the pool until about 6:45, and then went to dinner at 7:00. We decided to eat in the other dining room tonight, and we liked it a lot more. They have the same food as the other one, but it is a lot bigger and more open, and it has a view right off the back of the cruise ship.
After dinner, we went to the lounge (where I realized we spend about 50% of our time on the ship), and Rachel & I signed up for a game show called “55 to stay alive”, which is exactly like Minute to Win It. Basically, they give you a task, and you have 55 seconds to complete it, and if you can complete it, you make it to the final rounds. There were about 10 people who participated, and it was hilarious. One lady had to wrap her husband as a mummy in toilet paper. Another guy had to unwrap an entire roll of toilet paper using only two fingers inside of the roll. I had to bounce ping pong balls off of a table and make 5 of them into a bucket. Rachel had to shoot rubber bands at a tower of soda cans and knock them all down. The funniest one was a lady who had to knock down soda cans. She had women’s stockings with a tennis ball inside of the foot part, and she had to put the stockings on her head and swing it around like an elephant until she knocked all the cans over. Out of the 10 participants, only 3 completed their tasks and made it to the finals. Rachel and I were two of them, along with the stockings lady. In the final round, the 3 of us were blindfolded, and a random person from the audience had to guide us around and we had to find balloons and pop them. Whoever popped the most balloons won. Rachel decided to sit on the balloons, the stockings lady tried to step on them, and I popped them against my chest with my fingernails. In the end, the stockings lady had popped 2, Rachel had popped 6, and I had popped 18. (I cheated though. Shhh, don’t tell anyone!) We all got T-shirts and keychains for participating.
When we were done, we went into the theater for a Magic Show. Normally, I hate magic shows because it gives me a headache trying to figure out how they do the tricks. For this one, we were seated in the front row, so we could see how he did almost every trick. Since we were in the front row, he pulled Rachel on stage. He put two foam balls in her hand, closed her hand, and when she opened it, there were three. At the end of the show, he pulled me on stage. He told me we were going to fly. He made me flap my arms in front of the audience, and everyone was laughing at me. Then there was a table with a tablecloth, and he & I grabbed the corners of the table cloth and lifted it up, and the table started floating around the stage.
When the show was done, we went back to the lounge, where they had “Dancing with the Jade Stars” (Jade is the name of our cruise ship). There were 6 dancers from the cruise staff, and 6 people pulled from the audience to be their partners. Then they were given a type of dance, and had to make it up on the spot. It was hilarious, and most of the teams were actually really good. One team was voted off by the audience after each round. When a team was eliminated, they got a “prize”, but the prizes were hilarious. The hostess said to one girl, “As your prize, you get a picture of me to remind you what a loser you are.” It was a picture frame that said “You are a loser”, and it was a picture of the hostess making a mad face, pointing her finger straight to the camera. Another guy won a shore excursion for another cruise that was a month ago.
When the show was over, Rachel and I stayed in the lounge all night. We hung out with Fran, Connor, and tons of people who we met last night. Every night we meet more and more people, and we hang out and dance in there all night. It’s probably my favorite part of every day, besides getting off the cruise ship, of course.
Tomorrow we are going to Kusadasi, Turkey. I don’t really know what to expect, because I haven’t heard too much about it. To be honest, I didn’t like Athens that much. The entire city was very ugly, in my opinion, and it was not how I expected it to be. The ruins were amazing, but other than that, it wasn’t that great. Dubrovnik was much better, and I’m very excited to see what Turkey is like!"
