Athens, Day at Sea, Amalfi

So last we wrote we were overnighting in Athens. We decided to hit the town for dinner. We went to this cool Marina area with tons of restaurants and bars. We look at all the menus and I noticed that this one place had Lobster Spaghetti on the menu and I remembered someone telling me that it was a must have in Greece. So here I am imagining spaghetti with olive oil, garlic and succulent sweet lobster pieces. After about an hour of waiting and trying to choke down Ouzo, the biggest bowl you've ever seen came out of the kitchen across the street. Inside the bowl I found fettucine noodles with marinara sauce, mussels, clams, some other seafood and a WHOLE lobster in the shell. The man was kind enough to split the lobster in half. Since I don't like mussels, clams and seafood, I feel I was mislead. I took a bite and choked down the taste of sea life. Jody stared at me while I took my first bite and asked me how it was (since she's just as picky as me) and I told her it was okay. So she tried it and had one bite and that was it. The good news was we found a crepe shop across the street and had already stuffed ourselves with bread and dips before the "lobster spaghetti"! The crepe was amazing and we were satisfied!

The next day we took a tour of the Acropolis. What a nightmare! There were 50,000 people and 500 buses and NO organization whatsoever. It was also about 100 degrees outside. So Jody and I broke free from the tour (we were allowed!) and ran to the top of the 200 stairs and snapped about 4 photos and tried to get back down. That was when all hell broke loose! There were screaming women and children and people getting cut off from their tour groups. Thank God we made it out alive and will be happy to say we went there and saw it but also happy to never go back again.

So now we come to our Day at Sea. This was a pretty relaxing pool day for us. Although, there was complete drama at the pool with people fighting over pool chairs and some refusing to leave the stage area when the band wanted to play. So if you can picture a man on a pool chair on stage with a 5 piece brass band playing beside him. It was great for laughs! Then we had a lovely dinner at the Italian restaurant on board. Had a few drinks and decided to head to the casino. I played slots and won 46 dollars! Then we decided to play Blackjack and I lost a little bit. Jody lost 40 dollars right off the bat! I decided to move away and play the game I know, Roulette! I played for 5 minutes and walked away with 250 dollars!!! Ching ching ching!!

After the casino, we were hanging outside with lots of other people and we noticed an incredibly fast boat right by the side of our boat an Italian guy hopped on our boat! We had NO idea what was going on! Come to find out, the Italian boat police had to steer our ship through the Straight of Messina b/c it's Italy and they are anal! After we made it through the Straight, the same boat came zooming up and the Italian guy had to hop from our ship back on their speedboat! We got some cool photos to show you!

Today we were in Amalfi, Italy! Italy is beautiful! It was a small town but just gorgeous and tons of shops and restaurants. Jody and I decided to trek uphill about a mile along the coast. Again, not the smartest idea when it's about 100 degrees out and incredibly humid as well. We had sweat pouring down us and probably looked amazingly hot and gross. But we did it and then took a taxi back that cost 15 Euros for a mile. Best 15 Euros I've ever spent! We then got some gelatto that was amazing and headed back to the ship! Now we have to go b/c we've allotted our email time and we'll go broke!