I have opted to group our Katakolon, Greece stop with our days on the ship in this blog post.
Our days at sea (there were four of them) consisted of sleeping in, usually after a late evening. We would normally get up just in time before the breakfast offering ended. The rest of the time was a game of cat and mouse with everybody, sometimes you would see several people that you knew throughout the day and other days you literally wouldn't see anybody from our group, and remember we approx 70 people in our group. I have to admit that I really enjoyed my days at sea, more so on this cruise than any other cruise that I have taken. I don't know why this was the case, but it probably had something to do with that everybody had their own agenda. Hailey, McKay and Maddi simply wanted to be with their friends all day long. Sharma had a chance to relax with friends, family or by herself and therefore she was contented. I fell into the same boat as Sharma, but I must admit most of my time was spent on sea days to myself. Most of the time I spent my hours in the "Around the clock lounge". This was a large, usually empty lounge that overlooked the sea. There were nice couches and chairs that one could lounge on. I usually had a book, iPad or iPhone in hand to keep me company. If this lounge was busy I was go to "Rick's Piano bar" or the "Wien Wien ballroom", both of which were next door. One of my fondest memories was hanging out in the Wien Wien ballroom with my children and all of their friends while they did homework. They did home work for several hours with a couple of games of chess thrown in just to keep their sanity. My daughter practiced for jazz band on their grand piano in this ballroom. It was awesome to sit in the ball room listening to my daughter play the piano while I was adrift in the Mediterranean sea.
We attended most of the shows at night, sometimes we opted to skip the performances, usually if it was the dancers. The entertainment for the most part was mediocre at best, but we appreciated a few of the acts. Breakfast and lunch were usually on our own, meaning there was no preplanning to eat, sometimes you ate by yourself, other times you had a large group. We opted for late dinner seating, which meant that we ate at 9pm. Very unusual for us, and probably will not opt for the late dinning again. We chose this option because we had some long port days and wanted to make sure that we could make it back on board in time for dinner. We started out with everybody in our group doing late dinning, by the second night, there were probably only 15 of us. We knew coming on to this cruise that the food wasn't their forte and it lived up to our expectations unfortunately. There were a few things that they did really well and there were several that were just 'okay' and there were a few that were complete strikeouts. Their version of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving is the first thing that comes to mind. 'Horrific' I think best describes it. It looked inedible and it tasted even worse.
Our English liaison on board was able to arrange for all of the families with children in our group to have a chance to go up to bridge and meet the captain and see what it looks like to steer the ship. It is a marvelous opportunity, one that doesn't happen very much, in fact in the 13 cruises that we have been on, we have been to the bridge only one other time. I don't think they liked it too much when I tried to commandeer the ship...but hey it was worth a shot. I am sure there was a moment when the captain thought to himself "What did I get myself into?" when he saw 15 noisy, energetic children on his otherwise quiet bridge.
The ship was very nice, large and relatively empty. This made the cruise even that much better, the less people the better. Usually ships are filled so full that you have to reserve space on it just to sit down. The ship also had soft serve ice-cream. This may not sound like much of a luxury, but when you have kids that love ice cream this is a life saver. They may have eaten more ice cream than actual food.
The only downside to this trip was that some sort of sickness spread like wildfire through each of the families in our group. Our family had three people get hit with sickness. But literally every family had a bought of sickness-stomach ache, diarrhea, vomiting and just plain feeling bad. Luckily it only lasted one to two days and then it was gone.
The other thing about this cruise was that it was the best weather and calmest seas we have ever had. Everyday was sunny and 65 degrees. For three hours one evening the ship rocked moderately, other than that there was no rocking, so smooth you couldn't tell you were on a ship...calmest seas of all our cruises.
This brings us to our first stop...Katakolon. We have been to this stop before and did the only thing to do here...go to Olympia. Therefore because we had been here and McKay and Maddi were both sick we opted to get off of the ship and just find a beach and hang out there. Talking with a taxi driver at the port I found out there was a beach right next to the dock...literally 50 feet, it was called Plakes beach.
When we first got to the beach there was nobody there so my kids chose a couple of large rocks to sprawl across and catch some sun and just rest. Sharma and I did some exploring along the beach and collected sand and some small shells. Then I found a rock and found a comfortable position and let the sun beat down on me. After 30 minutes another person joined us, then 10 more minutes and four workers from the ship came and took a dip in the sea. Then 20 minutes after that another three joined us and so we decided it was time to pack up and go. We wandered into the town of Katakolon, there is not much there. One street 1/2 mile long with shops on either side. The most interesting thing happened however. I was in a shop with Sharma, she had picked out a couple of things so I was given the task of paying for the items. I struck up a conversation with the shop keeper as she spoke perfect English. We started making small talk and realized that she was from the US...then from Washington state...then from Tacoma...then had gone to my high school. She was a bit older than me so I wouldn't have known her, but still, what a small world. She gave me the 'Tacoma' discount on my items...nice.
By that point we were done and decided it was time to go back to the ship. We walked 10 minutes back to the ship and found our way to our cabin. Stop #1 completed.
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