March 1
Today the ship was at sea, sailing from Thessaloniki in the north to Kusadasi on the western coast of Turkey. This is the Aegean Sea.
Last night we changed time zones by an hour. I think in 2 days we will have to change back.
We thought it would be fun to try room service for breakfast. We got woken up by the doorbell on our stateroom (yes - doorbell) at 8 am. Is it 8 am? 7 am??? Oh, it's 8 am!
While we were having breakfast, we sailed past Mount Athos. You can see from the sailing map that the ship didn't go straight south from Thessaloniki, but we travelled north into an inlet to see Mount Athos. Mount Athos is also called "Holy Mountain". It is an autonomous monastic state in northern Greece with 20 monasteries and 2000 monks. Women not allowed! Not even to visit. Even men need special permits to visit.
Frankie had a lovely massage booked in the morning, while Anton did another load of laundry. Frankie got the better deal. Sorry, no picture!
We got a phone call from Guest Services - our suitcase was fixed! That was fast. All they did was put a screw into the handle. It does not retract all the way now, but it's usable.
At lunch we talked to a couple who had the same tour as us yesterday but left half an hour later. We got back to the ship at noon, they got back at 5 pm. Apparently the bus driver couldn't find a way around the protestors.
Frankie basked in the sun on our balcony and read a book for the afternoon.
In the port talk, we discovered that tomorrow (in Turkey) there would be a lot of people trying to sell us carpets. Price range between $900 to $5000. Apparently the sellers can be aggressive. And all the excursions include a carpet making demonstration LOL.
