March 6th & 7th, 2026

We had an uneventful flight Cairo to Athens. Viking took us to the airport in a van and helped us with our luggage and directed us to where we got our boarding passes. They were also waiting to help us with immigration and even filled out the paperwork for us. Great job to Viking. We landed in Athens at noon and had a ride to our hotel. Linda. Michael, Kathy & I were staying in Piraeus which is where the cruise ship will dock. Kathy & Michael stayed closer to Athens where Viking puts up their pre-cruise passengers.

The place we stayed in was a boutique hotel and while the rooms were nice they were basic. They did have a nice roof top bar looking out on the water and we went up and had a welcome drink on the house.

We took a walk down to the harbor and scoped out some restaurants for dinner.

I got some boat pictures in.

We had dinner on the waterfront and the 4 of us split a fresh caught sea bass which was grilled and deboned for us.

Preparing our fresh grilled catch of the day.

After dinner we watched a few shows on the iPad and I caught up on the blog.

In the morning we met Linda & Michael in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I had the Greek version of scrambled eggs which included includes tomatoes and feta cheese. After breakfast we packed up and checked out. The hotel called 2 taxis for us for the 10 minute drive to the port.

We had gotten notification that morning that we had been upgraded from our regular veranda room to a penthouse veranda which is the larger room we had for both world cruises. The negative of the upgrade is that the room has an actual door going out to the veranda and not a sliding glass door. I feel a little bad about complaining about a very nice upgrade. Linda & Michael also got an upgrade to the same category room but they’ve never experienced that category, hope they are hooked…

Check in was very quick and we were on board by 11:30. We were told our staterooms would be available by 1pm. Since we had just had breakfast we did not want to go to the buffet for lunch. We ran into one of the bar staff, Jeric, who recognized us immediately and was very happy to see us. It was nice to see a familiar face.

The iconic blue roofs of Greek Orthodox churches.

We got into our room at 1pm and dropped off our carry-ons and then ventured into town. We had no specific destination so we walked around the port. We ended up doing some shopping. We also found a local outdoor market that was selling honey in almost every stall. Different flavors and we ended up buying a jar with honey/hazelnut. We also got a local small bottle of Scotch thinking we could share it with everyone. We made it back to the boat by 4:30 and we bought a bottle of pomegranate liquor at the duty free thinking it would be good to mix with champagne.

Kathy & Michael invited us for pre-dinner cocktails at 6pm. They told us their cabin number but I did not figure out that they were in the owners suite until we walked to the cabin number. They wanted to surprise us and figured that since there were 6 of us on board it would be a great place to entertain. This is not their first time staying in the owners suite and there is only 1 on board every ship. You have a huge living room, conference room with a telescope, bedroom, dining room, large filled wine cabinet, bedroom, 3 bathrooms and a sauna out on the balcony. They had cheese plates, peanuts and Veuve Clicquot champagne chilling. It was a very nice surprise.

Sunset from the ship

They all told us that they had seen our favorite bartender, Aaron, that we had done both world cruises with so we were anxious to find him and say hello. Apparently the crew spreads the word pretty quickly when they see people they know and they let other crew, that were on the world cruise know, so Aaron was also looking for us.

We all had dinner together and since we were dining with people staying in the owners suite they reserve a table for you and they know the restaurant manager from a previous cruise.

After dinner we came back to the room and did 2 loads of laundry before people got out of the show. Then we went downtown to Torshaven, which is the night club on board, where we knew Aaron was working. Kathy of course got her “Kathy special” which is a double Aperol Spritz.

Our drinks and how wonderful to have Aaron on board with us. Now we are sad it is only a 9 day cruise. We spent a little time catching up and seeing pictures of his 2 kids.

We are docked overnight in Athens and Viking has a shuttle service that will take you close to the Acropolis and our plan is to take the shuttle in and walk around, shop some and have lunch before taking the shuttle back.