Sea Days

On port-intensive cruises like the ones we are doing, those few days at sea are always welcome.  Sea Days, as they are called, are days when the ship needs more time to get from one port to the next, or are designed to give passengers a chance to rest, relax, and enjoy the onboard entertainment and amenities.

For our trip, we will look forward to the sea days we have between:

• Rome and Athens - This sea day comes after three port days including a stop in Rome where we will have had a very full day.  And actually, this sea day is two days which will be necessary to get us ready for Athens and Ephesus which will be two very full days in ports.
• Mykonos and Malta - After port-heavy days in Athens and Ephesus, we expect Mykonos to be a relaxing day, so to have that followed by a sea day will give us a chance to unwind and enjoy just being on the ship.
• Malta and Barcelona - This sea day, on both cruises, is the dreaded packing day; the next morning we arrive in Barcelona where we have to disembark. No one likes packing day. Which makes the sea day before Malta even more precious.
• Naples and Venice - This sea day comes after not three, but four port days including stops in Florence and Naples.  We have 1 1/2 sea days until we arrive in Venice; the morning of the second sea day will be spent watching us arrive for Disney Cruise Line's inaugral stop in Venice, Italy.
• Dubrovnik and Malta - See the note about the sea day between Mykonos and Malta.  This will be our last true sea day with nothing to do besides relax onboard!

There is so much to enjoy onboard the ship, but what our family likes the most is being able to sleep until we wake up; no early shore excursion meeting time to make!  We can catch a movie, read a book, relax on the verandah. Take a nap, take a stroll around the deck, do some onboard shopping.  It's a great day to do the laundry (see previous blog post) if we time it just right. 

I like to use Sea Days to catch up on my trip notes, look at pictures we've taken, and, for this trip, type up some reports to upload to this blog while we are in the midst of our adventure!