This is the good life.

Michael and I boarded our cruise ship (named Pacific Princess) on the 7th of July after spending a day in Athens. Athens was somewhat disappointing: the city itself didn't have too much to offer and the Acropolis/ruins were teeming with tourists, covered by a lot of scaffolding and poorly labeled. The one really redeeming thing we experienced was the museum located in the Ancient Agora. It was small (only one long room) but we saw some of the coolest artifacts yet, like election ballots found in ballot boxes, stone tablets/markers used to determine who had to serve jury duty, a big tablet with their city laws written onto it and a collection of ceramic discs with names written on them to indicate an individual's vote for who should get ostracized from Athens (they did this once a month, apparently). Do you think anyone ever voted for themself?

And then it was cruise time. We got all checked in and we were led to our room where, lo and behold, they had hung "Just Married" balloons on our door and, WAY more exciting, we discovered that they had upgraded us from a room with a porthole window to a room with a full balcony! Omigosh, I was so excited and just kept giggling about how wonderful it all was. I still get gushy when I think about it. :)

This life is SO much different than the traveling we had been doing prior to this. Chocolates on our pillows before bed, fresh towels every morning (and afternoon, if we want), FABULOUS food and anytime access to the pool, casino, library, lounge, etc. Perhaps even better is that we get to wake up every morning in a different place, without having to unpack and repack every night (that was starting to get old). We've spent at least an hour every day lounging by the pool and every morning having breakfast on our balcony. It's hard to think that life can get much better or more relaxed than this.

We've also had the good fortune to have met some really good people. For dinner, if we choose to eat in the Club Room (and why wouldn't we? These dinners are wonderful.), we've been assigned to sit at a table with another young couple, Erin and Josh. Definitely a risky situation, if someone doesn't end up getting along, but we love our dinner mates. We spent last night laughing so hard we were practically crying at one of Josh's stories (if you ever meet him, ask him about the moose in the Grand Tetons) and have similar interests and senses of humor. It's been really fun.

So far we've stopped in Istanbul (second time for us) where we randomly ran into Hilary, one of our Intrepid groupmates, on the street (which called for grabbing a cup of tea and smoking a hookah together) as well as Yalta, Ukraine (which Michael aptly called Yawnta) and now Odessa, Ukraine. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to share, not because I don't have any, but because I wasn't expecting to find an internet point today and don't have any prepared.

By the way, for those of you aware of the shooting that occurred in Istanbul at the American Embassy this week, it did happen on the day we were there. But the Embassy was located far away from where we were and, in fact, we found out about it from the television in the cafe as we were sitting down to tea with Hilary. Of course it was in Turkish, so we didn't have much of an idea of the situation until we got to an internet point to read the news online. But we're safe and sound, no worries.

Well, I'm off. We've got to be back at the ship in a couple hours and there's more touristing to do before then. до свидания! (That's "bubye" in Ukrainian)