Cruisin' the Med ~ rapido style

Well, when Akis and I were working on the ship, we said to one another that the last place we would go on vacation would be on a cruise. I guess this is why you never say Never... Guess who went on a cruise. Yep, that's right. We joined Akis' brother for a 4 day whirlwind tour of the Greek islands. Now when I say whirlwind, I really do mean whirlwind. We were in 2 ports each day, except for Wednesday. The time in port was short ~ between 4 to 5 hours and often we arrived at 7am. Needless to say with 6am starts most mornings, we got off the ship more exhausted than when we got on.

That said, it was a great little cruise to get a taste for each of the islands. We managed to visit: Mykonos, Kusadasi (that is in Turkey), Patmos, Rhodes, Crete and finally Santorini, before heading home to Athens. All in 4 days... Yes a bit psycho. The ship was a bit smaller than we were used to. Here is a photo of our ship ~ Aegean Pearl in front of Zenith, a former Celebrity ship. The photo doesn't really show it, but the Pearl is about half the size of the Zenith. You may recall from a post a couple years ago when Constellation met with Zenith and Century, I had a photo of Zenith next to the Constellation. Zenith was the baby ship at half the size of the Millenium class ships... Yes, the Pearl was teeny.

We took tours in both Kusadasi and Crete ~ visiting old ruins which were quite interesting. Here are some of my favourite photos and others that tell what we got up to.

Sitting out back having coffee with Kyriakos:




Mykonos:

Kusadasi ~ in particular Ephessos:








The cold waters of Patmos:



And coffees...


Rhodes:









And of course, some lunch:




Crete ~ the palace of Knosos:




And me with the former President ~ for whom the new airport is named after...


Santorini:














Despite being a very quick cruise, it was nice to be able to see all of the places my family will be travelling to this summer on their 'Greek Experience'. Hopefully they will be able to enjoy the sights as much as I did.