Cruising the Greek Isles

I must say, if you're ever coming to see the Greek isles, I would recommend not taking a cruise. Yet, we had a nice time and made the best of it.

After 3 days on Mykonos, we hopped onto a cruise ship and sailed for Kusadasi, Turkey (the site of ancient Ephesis). We have been roughing it for so long, it was weird having people waiting on us hand and foot. It was nice, but not our thing. But the worst part about cruising is that, at least on this cruise, you stop for only 4 hours at each stop. That is ridiculous!!!

The only place we stopped for 11 hours at was Rhodes. That may be why that was my favorite stop. Rhodes is BEAUTIFUL!! We anchored at the port and were about 200 m. from the old walled city. It was so cool. I could spend a week walking the back alleys taking pictures of doors and buildings that spanned many centuries.

But before we went to the old city, we went by taxi across the island to Lindos, a small town on the Mediterranean side on a hill facing a beautiful cove filled with crystal blue water. We got to see a lot of the island because we had time, and that made us love the island. If we ever come back to Greece, Rhodes would be top on my list.

We also went to Patmos, Crete and Santorini. I think if we had more time, we would have loved Crete and Santorini. But in 4 hours? nope. I could tell Santorini was awesome, but i didn't even go to shore. There were SO many tourists waiting to go to shore (we anchored at sea and had to take small boats to the island), and then at shore there were lines of people where you'd have to take donkeys or cable cars up the mountain (the main towns in Santorini are on top of cliffs). Not my cup of tea.

The main things i remember about the cruise are 1) the nice people we met on the ship and 2) Layla. The WHOLE crew of our ship , the Agean I, and most of the tourists fell in love with Layla. She was dubbed princess of the ship from the first moments when we boarded. They loved her, and she was treated like royalty (and hence so were we!). She was given gifts, given free fruit drinks, pina coladas, bracelets...SHE WAS EVEN TAKEN TO THE CAPTAIN'S DECK !! She steered the ship, wore the captain's hat, and at the captain's gala, where he introduces his crew leaders, she was called up to stand by the captain's side and hold his hand. Let's put it this way...Layla is very spoiled now. But you can't blame her.