Thursday, June 22, 2023

Day 4 (Wednesday, May 17, 2023) - Katakolon, Greece, Celebrity Beyond 12 night Mediterranean Cruise

Another thing about our suite at the aft, sometimes it got really noisy. The night before there was a special show in Eden which is directly below us. We could hear the “booming” sounds coming from the 11 pm show. In addition, and I think this was just because we skipped Sicily, the ship was moving really fast to Santorini (originally, we were going from Sicily to Santorini with a sea day in between) and it sounded like something was getting ready to take off – the loud engine sound with a bunch of vibrating.

I had peeked at the tour offerings for Katakolon since this was our “bonus” port but there were, surprisingly, only 2 being offered, and they were both sold out. No biggie as we really weren’t very interested in taking a ship tour.  I had already called Kensington to let them know that we had to cancel our Sicily tour.

We decided to try Blu for breakfast this morning because it was downstairs from our cabin and a lot closer to the aft side of the ship. As we were checking in, a couple started waving at us and I realized immediately that it was our old friends, Joyce and Perter from Scotland. We had originally met them 15 years ago on a Celebrity cruise – the same cruise we met Wade and Charlie on. They are double zenith Celebrity Captains Club members – this was their 95th Celebrity cruise and they had actually changed their plans having just gotten off the Beyond a couple of weeks ago. They were scheduled for a different cruise but switched to our cruise just to surprise Wade. They were staying in an infinity veranda room and were moving for the 3rd time to a different deck. We agreed to meet with them in the Retreat Lounge after they packed and had their things moved. Wade was so surprised when they popped in. It was fun to catch up with them.

We later ended up at Cafe al Bacio for drinks and then went to the Mast Grill for lunch. I wanted to have a simple hot dog and french fries – both were good.  Cafe Al Bacio became one of our go-to places for a meet-up or drink. 



After lunch, we wandered off the ship into Katakolon, walked around a bit, and did some shopping. I bought some garlic-flavored spray olive oil (2,50 Euros), a Katakolon magnet (1,50 Euros), a box of different kinds of baklava (8 Euros), and a cute silver Greek bangle (15 Euros). I saw some of the largest roses I’ve ever seen – as big around as my face.







We got back on the ship and spent the afternoon hanging out at the Sunset Bar. A few more cocktails ticked off my bingo card.





Dinner tonight was at Fine Cut Steakhouse. Our waiter pretty much did the same thing as the Eden waiter – brought us just about one of everything on the appetizer and side order menus. Seth and I shared a boneless rib eye. The food was fantastic. My original plan was just to have vegetables and a small sliver of Seth’s ribeye but that didn’t happen as our waiter kept bringing dish after dish and I felt obligated to try them all. They were so good.
















We caught the “show” at the Martini Bar around 8:30 pm where the giant lights above the bar are synchronized to music and the bar staff perform juggling bottles and doing other cocktail tricks. Afterwards, we attended the Arte show which was really good. I enjoyed the music and the acrobatics were really quite good – the show reminded me a bit of a Cirque du Soleil show but set to updated versions of popular songs.


Next post:  Day5 - Thursday, 5/18/23 - Crete

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