Chapter 3

The first night on the ship was to get acquainted with our dinner mates. We had asked for a table of ten, as we thought it would be fun to get to know eight other people on the ship a little better than just saying, "Hello," and "Are you enjoying the cruise?" as we met them around the pool, or at breakfast, or the buffet lunch.

It was also a time to get to know our servers. We had four, two guys and two girls. The girls were Berta and Barsha, both from South Africa. The guys were James from Indonesia and Alex from the Philippines. We were all at table nine.

Our dinner guests were all from the U.S.A. There was Nick and Amy from Portland, Oregon. And Mark and Sally and their seventeen-year-old son Chad, who was celebrating his graduation and getting ready to go off to college and leave the nest. They were from South Pasadena, California. Then Maria and Jason from "Somewhere in Texas." They introduced themselves telling us their last name was Bond, "as in James Bond." And then Maria gave out a hearty laugh. Theirs was what I call a winter/summer marriage – Jason looked about fifteen years younger than Maria. In fact, when Kat and I got to the table they were already there with Marcy, who we thought was married to Jason. Marcy was somewhere in her thirties, and we automatically thought that Maria was one of their mothers, not Jason's wife. It turned out that Marcy was Maria's daughter from her first marriage. I was so glad that I hadn't said anything when we were introduced.

 

We would be passing many small Greek islands, so there would be plenty to see, and a comfortable promenade deck to view them from – relaxing on a lounge chair. Or maybe sharing one!

Some of the other guests had mentioned using the ship's practice nets for golf, and I wondered if some had even brought their own clubs. Kat agreed with me that our time would be better spent exploring the towns and countryside, leaving the golf for when we got back home.

I checked on the tour of Istanbul which was a walking tour that we'd arranged for our first day there, and was informed that it had been canceled. But to compensate us for the inconvenience, they said they would upgrade us to a much better tour, a half day bus adventure of quaint shops and a free lunch at no additional cost.