travels, races, and other musings

At Sea Thank goodness for this sea day. I think we all just needed a day to chill and reset after the heat and crowds of the previous couple of days. We also gained an hour as we switched back to the Italy time zone from the one Greece was on. Consequently, I woke up early so I went up to the gym and was able to hop on the Peloton bike they have. Actually, they have two but one was out of order and the other had been in use each time I was there. It was really easy to log into my account and connect my Bluetooth headphones, selecting a ride I had previously bookmarked in my account. By the time I was leaving the gym at 7:15 AM the place was a madhouse. If you want a chill gym experience on the ship, get there before 6:15 because after that is when people really start to trickle in steadily.  I found a lounger in Quiet Cove and relaxed until everyone else was up and then we went to Cabanas together for breakfast. After that, we returned to the room where we all got ready for the day...

Santorini At the beginning of our trip I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw that a longtime friend of ours who lives in Chicago and we hadn’t seen in person in a long time had posted a picture from the Acropolis in Athens. So we sent him a message and asked if he was in Greece. He was! Their family was taking a DIY Greek island hopping vacation (mostly using ferries). We compared itineraries and realized we were going to be in Santorini on the same day so we arranged to meet up. We got up around 7:30, got ourselves ready, ate breakfast, and made our way to the Walt Disney Theatre a little after 9 AM to get set for the process to go ashore, which is a little complicated in Santorini. First we waited in the theatre for about 30 minutes for our turn for a tender. Once we arrived at the island and disembarked from the tender we went straight for the gondola to take us to the top of the island to the town of Fira. There are actually three methods for getting to the top: the gond...

Rhodes A lot of our all ashore times on this trip were early. Consequently, we were performing mooring operations early in the morning and as a result of that, I was awakened early to the vibrations of the ship’s thrusters. So I woke up at 5:45 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was planning on going to the gym anyway so it worked out, I just got a slightly earlier start than I otherwise would have.  I finished my workout and went back to the room and showered while everyone else was getting up, then we all went to breakfast together at 7:45 AM. We ate at Cabanas and then finished getting ready and got off the ship to meet our driver Agi with Rhodes Taxi Tours  for our private tour (it was a steal for 250 Euros). It’s worth noting that Rhodes was not on our original itinerary when we first booked the cruise. It was Kusadasi, Turkey. However, given how many times Disney has cancelled Turkish ports in the past, we didn’t figure we were going there so really it was just a waitin...

At Sea On our cruise meet group I had planned a pajama breakfast for everyone in Royal Court at 8 AM. In the last cruise group I helped run we did this and it was a roaring success. Regrettably, this time there was a late night movie the night before and they were serving Mickey churro waffles in Cabana’s that morning so attendance was about half of those that had initially signed up. Those that came had fun anyway and some went up for second breakfast at Cabana’s to have the waffles (I think they are greasy and overly sweet, but people are nuts about them so I dunno).  After that we returned to the room and got ready and I went to drawing class to learn to draw Daisy. Well, it was more of a refresher because I’ve drawn Daisy (and Donald who is basically the same but without eyelashes and a bow) many times. Between the last cruise and this one, I spent some time trying to practice my character drawing by watching videos on YouTube. After that we picked up an Anna’s Chocolate Chase ...