Day 8: All aboard!

This morning, we got up early to return the rental car and catch our ride to the cruise. I realized that I haven't explained the cruise much here on the blog, so let me do that. It lasts 7 days, and includes ports to Greece, Turkey, and one port in Italy.

Each day, I'll be attending Psychology classes on the ship. The course I'm taking is focused on Mental Health and Addictions. I've never taken classes on this specific topic before, so I'm looking forward to learning new things. The classes happen each morning, then we get the afternoons/evenings free to see the different ports.

We got on the ship around noon, and had lunch on one of the three restaurants included in the price of the cruise. It's basically a nice buffet that's "all you can eat." After lunch, we found our room, then spent a couple of hours just walking around the ship, trying to see all the different decks and things they offer, like a gym, two pools (one is adults only), spa, mini-golf, rock climbing wall, shopping mall, etc.

There are three restaurants that cost additional money, and they include a sushi place, a steakhouse, and an exclusive "chef's table" restaurant. Normally in the U.S., these "extra" restaurants would cost between $30 extra per person (for the steak house) up to $95 extra per person (for the chef's table). However, we decided to purchase a "fine dining package," allowing us to go into all three restaurants (on different nights) for a total of only $105 extra per person. Yes, this is a little expensive considering that we already paid for all of our meals in the "normal" restaurants, but we're afraid of getting tired of the same two places for all 3 meals each day. Plus, $105 is a super good deal for a total of three different meals at fine dining restaurants (and for one of them, it includes wine).

Right before we left Venice, we had to gather on deck and watch a safety demonstration. Then, in the shopping area, the liquor store was offering free samples of about a dozen different types of booze (don't worry, we didn't try ALL of them). After that, the psychology class people all met for a "meet & greet" in one of the ship bars, and then we went to dinner. There are different dances/parties on board every night starting around midnight, but I'll be going to bed early every night, due to the 8:00 am classes the next day.

Speaking of that, I'm going to bed now... so tomorrow, you'll get to read about my first set of classes and our first port.