Monday (Day at Sea)

What a relaxing day! We woke up when we felt like it and walked one flight downstairs for breakfast. We both order eggs benedict (with extra sides of bacon and fried ham), big glasses of orange juice and crossaints. We ate so much we skipped lunch... okay so we didn't officially skip lunch but we ate a light snack in the cafe just to tide us over to dinner. Most of the day was spent walking around the ship and finding a pool chair to lay on. (Which is actually quite a challenge with everybody putting their towels down to "reserve" their spot and then running off to get something to eat or go play bingo.) We finally decided to assist in enforcing the posted signs that said if you don't actually use the chair for 20 minutes your towel will be removed so that other guests can enjoy the chair. We figured if anybody ever did come by and say Hey that's my chair we would get up and look for another one. It never happened though, people were gone for hours at a time. It
was crazy with so many people on the ship. They had a couple of really cool "papasan" chairs on deck 12 and 13 up towards the front of the ship. We only sat in those once - we arrived by 6am! We listened to a presentation on each of the ports we would be visiting. This was Ken's first time really hearing about the ports since I had done all the research. It seemed like it would be a busy week and the cruise excursions were so expensive! No I'm serious. Even someone who is not as cheap as me would gasp at the 130 Euros just to shuttle you from the boat to Rome. The tour was called "Rome on your Own". We opted to walk to the train and pay for the 9 Euro train ride which gave you just as much time in the city for a lot less money! The most expensive excursion was 5,000 Euros a person to cook with and Italian chef in Tuscany. While that sounded like a fun experience I can't imagine forking over that kind of dough! The Excursion crew did warn us that the train may be unreliable (break down or be late) and that some people had been left in port before because they didn't go with the cruise recommended excursion. For the price delta we thought we would take that risk (with thousands of packbackers around Europe is the train really that bad?) and if we had to pay for a taxi on the way back well we would have to ante up then. Anyway, that was most of our day. They did have a Wii set up on the big screen in the middle of the ship so Ken and I signed up for tennis doubles. This is possibly the worst game I could play on the Wii and Ken had to carry most of the weight. We ended up losing, but not by too much to a few 10 years old who had obviously spent some serious time gaming. Oh well. Ken had fun and now thinks we need a Wii...