Early rise, but I don't care, we are starting the cruise today!!! I'm always getting up early, to make sure I have everything ready. Excellent breakfast, this is a good hotel. We have a random bus picking us up, we had to make sure all the tags on our suitcases showed the right room number, it's complicated and there are a lot of rules. It's about a 30 min ride to the Port, and I sat at the back of the bus, and I tried to interact with my new group. I realized that most of them got to know each other at the dinner last night. Still, they all look nice enough :)
The whole process before getting on the ship was long, confusing and somewhat boring. I won't go into details, but you have to wait in line for a lot of things, you fill a lot of paper, answer a lot of questions and spend a few hours thinking you are completely lost. (They even take your passport after you get your boarding pass and you don't get it back until the last day. It's not reassuring.) It wasn't very fun. But I took the opportunity to talk to some new people again. I met this really nice girl from Montreal, Sabrina, and I detected no French accent from her, so we just kept on speaking English. (Found out at the end of the trip she was perfectly bilingual, like me, so we could have spoken either lol)
Finally on the ship. I'm super excited, it's impressive and it so totally feels like a real vacation. I like directions and instructions so it was a bit weird that there was nothing to follow. We were going to have a meeting this afternoon to discuss what optional activities we could/would do and some general information, but that's about it. Laura pointed us in general directions of things, but we were on our own. Got settled in the room, then I grabbed my camera and just went to walk around. It was a bit hectic but I was loving it. I spent hours exploring, taking pictures and trying to find my way around. I stumbled upon a big part of the group, on a deck, already drinking. I met another group at the bar by the pool, and sat down with them and had a few relaxing drinks. (I made sure I went and registered for my all-included alcohol drinks package right away. 166 euros. That way, any drinks I wanted during the week, water, pop, booze, was all included, all I had to do was swipe my card. This was great, it was my room key, my ID and my account at the same time.)
I even went to the evacuation drill with my life vest on, looking like an idiot. But it was funny, and who knows, at least now I knew how to put it on. All and all, a pretty normal almost boring day. Except I was on a cruise ship!!! I went to play Bingo with Tanya, we both won lol and we attended the meeting, picked our activities and made plans to all meet for dinner later on, before going to the Disco.
Dinner was a bit fancy, but excellent. Everyone had pretty much been indulging the cocktails today, so add the wine for dinner and we all ended up having a terrific time at the disco. It's been a long time since I've been this excited to be at a club, before 10pm haha Had a few drinks, danced, had a lot of fun but I didn't want to stay out too late as we had a pretty big day tomorrow in Istanbul. Of course I had to stop by the Sports Bar, made friends with the wait staff and bartender, grabbed a last beer and went to the casino. It was a small room with a Black Jack table and about a dozen or so slot machines. I love slots, it can be dangerous. But I kept myself in check, played cheap and broke out even. Then I went to bed.
I have to note that I don't suffer from sea sickness at all, and you could barely feel the boat move, except when the wind was exceptionally strong, and that didn't happen a lot. And it night, it was so peaceful, this rocking sensation that helped me sleep. Also, the bathroom was really small and the corner that was the shower was really tiny, and the shower curtain looked very gross. We barely ever used it. It was a very not-fun shower, as the whole bathroom would get soaked as it was all on the same level. You couldn't leave anything in there and you had to stuck your towel and clothes on the higher shelf. It was weird, but hey, at least we had decent toilets. (You can't <flush> any toilet paper in Greece, even on the cruise ship. It's a bit gross but you get used to it.)
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