Greek Islands Anniversary Celebration Cruise

Tom and I went on a really fun cruise to the Greek Islands. We had a lot to celebrate during the cruise with Tom's promotion and our Anniversary!

The view through our Stateroom window on the cruise ship as we sailed past Venice, Italy. We drove to Venice and it was a long, but nice drive. We were able to park our car at the Port very easily and had a hassle-free departure for our cruise. We boarded the ship and went to our Stateroom and enjoyed some Champagne.

Our first port of call was Split, Croatia. There is a big downtown area that used to be a walled city and Palace. We wandered around the narrow streets, visited a chapel and climbed to the top of a hill to see the view. Not much was going on since it was a Sunday morning so after exploring, we headed back to the ship for lunch!

Our second port of call was Corfu, Greece. The first land mark that we came to in Corfu was the New Fortress. There is a New Fortress and an Old Fortress, but they are both really old and we climbed to the top of each of them. The two Fortresses are across town from one another so along the way we browsed the small shops and walked through the old town.

Our third port was Athens, Greece! At this port we took a tour to see the Acropolis and then a short city tour. The Acropolis was really neat. It is just hard to grasp how old some of these ruins and relics are. The Greeks do a lot of work to keep the buildings on the Acropolis standing. They were doing a lot of renovations while we were there for our tour. It was fun to hear some of the Greek Mythology stories and how they tie in with history and the acheaological sites we study.

The fourth stop on our cruise was the island of Mykonos. On this day we took a tour to see the small isolated island of Delos. This island was one of the most important archeaological sites in Greece. It was a very important trading port during the golden age of Greece, which is the 6th - 4th centuries BC. It was considered a sacred island because it was dedicated to the Greek god Apollo. Many large and elaborate houses and temples were built there and many of these buildings are still there with the foundations laid out and some walls standing. The island was attacked in 88BC and abandoned. It was left for thousands of years until French archeaologists began exploring the island in the late 18oo's. Needless to say, we learned a lot on this tour and were very impressed :)

After the tour of Delos, a small boat took us back to Mykonos and we had a very nice traditional Greek lunch of Gyros and then looked around Mykonos until it was time to go back to the ship. We enjoyed this stop on the tour. Mykonos was very picturesque.

Our fifth port of call was Olympia. We took another tour here that went to the Ancient Olympic stadium and site of the first Olympics. This is also were the Olympic flame is lit and starts out from every two years. The structures here were not as well preserved as in Delos, but we did get to stand on the marble starting blocks on the running track!