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Day 1

Hello everyone! Welcome back to the holiday blog... and what a beauty this one is going to be!
Lets start right at the begining, firstly I found us a brilliant holiday in Canada and the US, travelling down from Canada on the Amtrak train to New York taking in the beautiful scenery and Niagara falls from both sides then a cruise from New York around Canada. WOW I hear you say, well..... Leon didn't say WOW, he said No and poo-poo'd the idea. Leon wants Dexter to experience a hot holiday dipping in and out of the pool etc so a med cruise it is.

We have a full day and a hotel stay in Athens the day we arrive so I said to Leon shall we book the hop on hop off bus and have a look around, Leon agrees this a good idea and I book it - later he asks me why we are going to the hotel and not leaving our stuff on the cruise, I explain (again) we won't be on the cruise as its not until the next day.
Our flight is at 5.35am tomorrow morning and Leon thinks its a good idea for us travel down today and set up camp in one of the airport lounges as we have free access to them. As we don't have anywhere to stay tonight Leon now thinks the hop on hop off bus without sleeping is a bad idea.

The morning starts really well, Leon heads out for a haircut and eye test so he's out of my way and not stressing me out, I finished off packing mine and Dexters cases and getting the dog stuff ready to go. Leon gets packed and we are ready to go. First we take Frankie over to Clark and Kelly's (Thank you so much for having her!!) and set off down to Gatwick.

Remember the Leon always misses the turn off to the M11?? He didn't this time :) and the journey down is quite smooth apart from a lorry on fire on the M25 and Dexter's constant moaning about being bored.

We reach Gatwick about 5.30pm (12 hours to flight) and try and find the meet and greet place, that's not easy to find and I keep directing Leon but he thinks I'm wrong and we drive past it 3 times.... finally we are here!

We head into the airport and drop our bags off and walk off to security, I put our boarding pass on the barrier to let us through and it doesn't let us go through... It says YOUR A DAY EARLY!!! So I speak to an assistant who advises us we cannot go through until 2/2.30am!!! Leon's plan has fallen apart and we are stuck outside the airport without our stuff, no car and no fancy pants airport lounge :( :(

In the end we ended booking a hotel and getting something to eat. At least now we can get some sleep before going on the hop on hop off bus tour tomorrow!!

Day 2
Thursday14th August 2025 - Athens

At 3am we are woken by both Leon's and mine alarms singing beautifully together, unfortunately thats about the only beautiful thing around here! Last nights sleeping arrangements didn't go well, there weren't any family rooms left so we opt'd to all stay in a double together. All 3 of us in bed together, for the first couple of hours I spent the night thinking Dexter's going to fall out the bed until finally I said to Leon lets pop him on the floor and to be fair he didn't really notice or care he was on the floor - the joys of being a 6 year old.

So we are now up and have a quick shower, I must of got 2 hours maximum of sleep last night and I feeling a bit tired. We head off to the airport which is now alot busier than it was yesterday and yes we are able to go through security this time, hooray!! Once through we do a tiny bit of shopping then find a Starbucks to wake us up.
After our coffee we walk around for a little while and stumble across the airport lounges (remember those from yesterday? Leon's great plan to hang out there while we wait 12 hours for our flight?) We sort of walk towards them but we only have 30mins before we need to start boarding, we go in anyway....
...30 mins later we have had breakfast, been to a nice toilet and feeling ready to catch our plane.
The plane ride was fine nothing really to report with that and we are met at the airport by our private transfer who is actually a really nice old fella who takes us to our hotel.
At the hotel the guy behind the desk greets us and I tell him our name and he says to me I have good news for you, you have been upgraded!! Lovely, the holiday is really starting to go well now.
We get into our upgraded room which is nice enough and get changed, we have the hop on hop off bus to catch. I will just point out at this stage I have shorts on so my very white legs are out on show.
The reception guy tells us where to catch the bus it's about 15/20 min walk from the hotel and in this heat with a 6 year old it's a bit of a task but we make it!

The hop on hop off bus is a bit confusing but we manage to get around in the end. As we are here I really wanted to see the Acropolis and Parthenon and we ride the bus round to see it of course it the last stop so by this time everyone is quite tired (by quite tired I mean very tired and grumpy). There's a short walk up to the buildings and as we started Dexter said he just couldn't go any further so we gave up! I took a couple of photos from the bottom and I'm calling that done.

The weather here is 33 degrees and it is hot! I'm going to be honest my perimenopausal self is quite grumpy about the heat and I'm really not enjoying that or constantly hearing Dexter doesn't want to walk anymore or is bored - poor Leon!!!

Day 3
Friday 15th August 2025 - Athens (Cruise)

Hi everyone, hope you're ok? So here we are in Athens in our hotel still. Finally we manage to get some proper sleep and a shower with our toilettes and clean clothes - that feels so much better. We have packed all our stuff and decide to take it downstairs so we can check out ready for our private transfer over to the cruise. As always we do one last check of the room to ensure we have everything.

Breakfast isn't included at the hotel but we do have the option to buy it at 10 euros each if we want, so we head downstairs to check it out and after seeing it we decide we do not want. We take a stroll down the road in search of some nicer looking food and find a sort of bakery and settle in for some food. After that we took a leisurely trott around our area and back to the hotel.

Shortly after we arrive back at the hotel our taxi comes along to pick us up, with our suitcases loaded and us in we head off to the cruise.
At the cruise terminal you give them your suitcases and they do the rest for you and deliver your cases to the room.
We are here quite early so we can't get into our room yet, we have a look around the ship and at 1pm go off to check our room out. Now when I say this isn't the best room we have ever had I mean actually it's pretty crap (really crap) but hey we are on holiday and thats what matters.
We have a couple of pieces of hand luggage with us and one of them is Dexters trunki, we settle into our room and Dexter opens his trunki - after a while Dexter says "I can't find my glasses - I'm sure I packed them in my trunki". We all look through his trunki and the other pieces of hand luggage and they are nowhere in sight. I call the hotel and the receptionist tells me to call back tomorrow!?
Leon calls them back and explains we are on a cruise ship blah blah blah, we can't call back tomorrow and we aren't returning to Athens, he says call back in 2 hours!! When we call back at 3pm he tells us he has them!! Leon asks him to pop them into a taxi and send them to the port to meet us and we will pay them but he refuses :( Leon runs down to get off the ship and get a taxi but the cruise are unhappy to let Leon leave and says he must be back onboard before 4pm, after looking on Apple maps he finds out he cannot make it back to the hotel and back in time!! I call the hotel and speak with the receptionist again and plead with him to taxi the glasses over to us but he still refuses. Thats it no glasses for Dexter on this holiday, and after our final check of the room we were so sure nothing had been left behind - the glasses had got covered over by Dexters quilt :(

The funniest thing today and this is going to make you laugh out loud...
So while we were waiting for our room to be ready we had a few jobs to do but first Dexter needs the toilet.... Leon goes with him and I wait outside and wait and wait, anyway a while later they both come out with massive smiles :) Dexter has had a massive poo and by massive I mean this thing could sink the titanic! So I didn't miss out on this amazing massive poo they took a photo of it to show me!! To be fair I think its the largest poo I've ever seen! Anyway back to the jobs we need to do and the first one is to sort the wifi out, at the internet centre a guy is trying to help Leon use the free wifi on his phone, so Leon opens his phone and right there on his screen is Dexters amazingly big poo staring the poor internet guy in the face! I couldn't help it but I just burst out laughing, Leon was so embarassed and says to the guy 'its his!" pointing at Dexter!! I'm actually cracking up again just writing this.

Dexter went off to kiddie club tonight and we went to the casino, this casino is quite expensive so they may not be many updates about the casino on this trip.

Night, night beautiful people...

Updates will be a bit slower as I don't have wifi for my computer.

Day 4
16th August 2025 - Santorini

Geia sou (Hello) from Santorini, Greece. This morning we are on a mission, a duck mission. Basically theres this thing on cruise ships where people take rubber ducks and hide them for other people to find, I may have mentioned it before I can't remember. This time we are armed with rubber ducks to hide and Dexter is VERY excited by our mission. So we are up and at em first thing this morning, before showers we are out the door and hiding ducks, we go everywhere hiding them, Leon hides them in hard to find places, Dexter is easier places and me in funny places.

Dexter heads off to kiddie club for the morning while Leon and me done something we don't normally do... we joined in with other people in doing a movie music quiz, now let me tell you something about Leon, he doesn't care for movies or music BUT we won! Thats right you read that right we won!!! Now let me explain just how this happened, We sat down having a coffee and this quiz starts Leon says to me shazam the movie music quiz snippets, I did and we anwsered 17 out of 20 snippets correctly and won.

After lunch we went out via a tender boat to Santorini, its meant to be one of the most beautiful of greek islands, by the time the tender boat gets there (about 10 minutes) Dexter is already saying he wants to go back! There is a massive mountian to get up once we have docked, there is a cable car ride up but there is also a massive queue for the cable cars and it's very hot. We all decide to go to a cafe and have a drink and decide what we want to do, once at the cafe I try to update my website but something has gone wrong and I can't get it to update. I'm started to get annoyed, Dexter is hot and bored and Leon is just trying to have a peaceful beer, Leon takes Dexter off to the waterside and they sit on some steps together looking into the sea where they found fish which Dexter absolutely loved. It hasn't been the best afternoon and after about 40 minutes we board the tender and go back to the ship.

Back on the ship we decide to go duck hunting and thankfully we found a duck lurking in some plants - thats my win for today! On the way to dinner I found another very small duck.

Dexter goes back to kiddie club for the evening and Leon and me chill out.

Day 5
Sunday 17th August 2025 - Santorini

We are still in Santorini as we had an overnight stop here, cruises don't often do overnight stops but it's nice if you fancy a hotel stay or just seeing the place you at in the evening.

Our day starts with breakfast and Dexter going to kiddie club. Leon has suggested to me that we should go back on land and explore a bit as we didn't yesterday. We go back on the tender boat over to Santorini and this time when we get there it's alot less busy, theres almost no queue for the cable cars and we're at the top in no time. At the top I snap up a few photos over looking the bay where we can see a few cruise ships, the beautiful white buildings and long winding path leading up the mountain with lots of donkeys waiting to take people up (rather than taking the cable car).
We walk around the cobble streets popping into shops and just taking in some of the pretty scenery. On the way back I spot one shop selling rubber ducks! These are bigger than the ones we brought from home so we stop to buy one for Dexter, we got a blue duck with donkey ears.
On the way back we hatch a plan that we will hide the duck so Dexter can find it and be all excited about it.

After lunch we grab Dexter out of kiddie club and take him for an afternoon of fun, theres a small waterslide on the boat and bigger swimming pool so we spend the afternoon splashing about.
Back in our room and Dexter is running on about some experiement he did at kiddie club and wants to do it again to show us but we don't have all the stuff he needs, to try and take his mind off of it we decide to go rock wall climbing and hide the duck we got him along the way.
We have a plan - We hid the duck in the bathroom and Leon goes in and slips it in his pocket, when we are about to leave I tell Dexter that we will play a trick on Daddy and lock him out of the room giving Leon enough time to hid the duck and wait with it so no one else finds it, this all works fine. Dexter and me then leave our room to find Daddy (he isn't far away).
Just as we get to him Dexter starts chatting to Leon about locking him out then 2 boys run over very excitely to get an amazing blue donkey duck they have spotted!! Oh-no this has gone horribly wrong :( I end up shouting NO, NO, NO!!! at the boys, Dexter is looking at me very weirdly and the boys stop look at me and I tell them "you can't have that one" and they go away. Leon walks over to the parents and explain what we have done and tells them we will hide 2 ducks for the boys in a place only they know about.
In the meantime I pick Dexter up so he can reach our duck and we take it back to our room. Dexter is very unbothered by this amazing blue donkey duck we got him because all he can think about is making this kiddie club experiement again!! We give in and let he make it even though he hasn't got everything he needs, it doesn't work like we thought but now hes over it and has forgotten about it.

Next we go to the rock climbing wall. It's quite a good one, quite high and a bit harder then walls that Dexter has climbed before. Leon and Dexter climb the wall together both getting to the top and ringing the bell!

After dinner Dexter wants to go duck hunting and is excited about it this time! He's the leader and takes us around the ship looking for ducks - we don't find any! I'm now wishing we had waited to hide our duck so Dexter was actually excited to find it :(

Day 6
Monday 18th August 2025 - Mykonos

Greetings, today we have docked in Mykonos which is another greek island and much the same as Santorini really.
After a spot of brekkie we disembark from the boat to find out what Mykonos holds for us today. First thing we see is a sea boat going into Mykonos town for 2.50 euros each so we decide to go along for the ride.
Once in the town we stroll around and find lots of white buildings again and shops, we stock up with hats and sunglasses.
We manage to get quite lost in the narrow streets of the town and go past where we need to catch the sea bus back, Leon and me had a slight disagreement about the way to get back and of course Leon was correct and I was wrong!
Once we managed to find our way back we get back on the cruise and have some lunch then drop Dexter off at Kiddie club.
Tonight Leon and me are going to a fancy pants sushi restaurant to celebrate our wedding anniversary (early I know but we decided to do it on the cruise).
Before dinner we all go out and hide ducks I feel like this all holiday has been about ducks! I've been in touch with a lady on facebook who is also hiding ducks and she has given me some clues on where they are, while Dexter is having his dinner I run over to the spa to find one.
We drop Dexter back at kiddies club and head off to the fancy pants sushi place, while I'm there the facebook lady posts another clue about a duck which is just around the corner from where we are, so I run out of the sushi place to search for another - got it!!
Our meal is delicious, so much so we book this place again for Thursday night.
After our meal its a trip to the casino.
So..... are you wondering why there's no starbucks updates??? Well let me explain, I already have Greece, Italy and Spain cup so I have no need to find a cafe. Plus the cruise ship we are on serves Starbucks coffees :) happy days. However today when we left the ship there right in front of my eyes was a sandwich board advertising Starbucks!!! and on the way back I saw the back of the sandwich board advertising Starbucks cup.... A Greece and a Mykonos cup, now I don't have a Mykonos cup and got quite excited about a new cup joining my collection but Leon said I'm not allowed to have one because I already have the Greece one :( he poo poo me...

Night peeps - sweet dreams xxx

Day 7
Tuesday 19th August 2025 - At Sea

It's an at sea day and you know what that means not much in the way of updates!
Breakfast was at the buffet which is standard for us on this cruise, the food hasn't been amazing (apart from last nights fancy pants dinner at the sushi place), so we have mostly opted for the buffet for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

After breakfast we take the stairs down rather than the lift and Leon, yes Leon finds his first duck!! It was hiding behind an ornament on the stairs. This sparks another duck hunt and off we go...
As we go down each flight of stairs we check high and low for ducks, I stand in a balcony on one floor where I can see across to the other side of this floor and spot something in a wall decoration, I head off that way closely followed by Dexter and as I get there I can see there is something on the decoration and on closer inspection I see its JESUS!! yes JESUS....
I mean I didn't even know Jesus liked cruising??!!
It's a small figurine of Jesus, I picked him up and show Dexter who confirms its Jesus, Dexter is actually pretty happy we found him.
We continue down the stairs until we get to the coffee shop which in case I haven't mentioned serves Starbucks coffee ;)
On the next floor down I pop to customer services for a bit of a moan as I've been charged for some drinks we didn't order, while I'm waiting in the queue Dexter comes running over with another duck he found stuffed behind a phone on the wall. When I'm finished at the customer services I can't see Leon and Dexter so I walk off and look around for ducks and I spot a tiny duck sitting on the side waiting for me to pick it up - So everyone found a duck today.

Dexter goes off to kiddie club and Leon and me go and have a look around the shops onboard. Leon got me a ring which has a watch face on it and a travel bag.

After Lunch I'm off to have a massage and oh boy I'm looking forward to this, a 75 minute hot stone massage and it totally lived up to the hype I've been telling myself. The only trouble with these massages is they try and sell you loads of products afterwards and they have even booked me in with some doctor to discuss anti-aging with me, argh I think how am I going to get out of this.... As I'm walking through I spot Leon and Dexter waiting for me and Dexter starts chatting to me. I tell the lady I've got to go to toilet and trott off when I come out of the toilet I signal to Leon and Dexter to come over to me and we sneak off.... hahahahaha, I escaped the doctor!

This afternoon we have a round of mini golf and Leon and Dexter conqured the climbing wall again, this time Leon done the timed climb and got up in 17 seconds!! GO LEON!!

So here's some dull information for you -

Weather has been constantly in the low 30's
No seasickness has been found (yet) on this cruise
No more interesting poo stories

I think thats about it for today - see ya tomorrow
xxx

Day 8
Wednesday 20th August 2025 - Sicily

Ciao from Sicily! Today we have docked up on the little island off the mainland of Italy. Our morning starts the same as every morning has really, shower, breakfast while duck hunting along the way to the restaurant. The food in the buffet is going down hill, every day for every breakfast, lunch and dinner they serve indian food, its very weird!

We leave the boat to go and explore whats outside, just as we are getting out of the dock flocks of people assend upon us trying to sell tours, Leon walks off and leaves Dexter and me to try and fight our way past all these people (cheers Leon!) We get past ok with some very stern looks and strong no's from me.
We really weren't expecting that but once passed we stop to assess what we are going to do now. A much friendlier lady comes over and tells us about a local hop on hop off bus (and you know we like a hop on hop off bus!). So 25 euros later we board a strange looking bus with open sides, the lady told us it takes about an hour for the bus tour and we can jump off when we like.
Instead of having headphones telling you information about where you are there is a lady at the front speaking 5 different languages, she speaks so quickly we can't really understand what shes saying. The bus doesn't seem to stop where it says it will on the map and only makes 2 stops! This is all very odd and about 20 minutes later we pull in back where we started from, we decide to just get off and have a look around.
Lucky for us we found a 1 euro shop!!
On the way back to the boat we stopped a couple who were then leaving and gave them our hop on hop off ticket so hopefully they made good use of the 20 minute tour aswell!

Back in the boat and we are duck hiding today, this really excites Dexter and he gets quite serious about it "right, everyone follow me, I'm in charge of the duck hiding" he tells us.
We find 1 small blue duck today.

After dinner Dexter goes to kiddie club and Leon and me lose more money in the casino.

Another dull fact for you - there are alot of gay men on this cruise probably because we went to Mykonos so we have named them bumders (from the inbetweeners programme).

It's another hot one here 33 degrees.

Day 9
Thursday 21st August 2025 - At Sea

Yep folks another at sea day so theres a lack of updates for you.....

.....But first let take you back to yesterday and those infamous seasickness reports. Oh yeah baby we found some!! So last night we went to pick squiddy up from kiddie club and Leon started to feel queasy! By the time we got back to our cabin he had turned a little green, he just put himself to bed and slept it off - this morning he was fine again. I'm not overly sure what made him feel sick as the boat wasn't rocking very much maybe we need to go on more cruises so he can get used to it again ;)

Back to this morning, same routine shower, breakfast and drop off Dexter. On the way back to our room Leon found a duck!! Then we found another one, this sparked a duck hunt!
We actually ended up finding quite a few.
After lunch we hide the rest of the duck we have.

The afternoon is taken up with packing as we have to leave our suitcases outside our cabin tonight so they can take them off the boat for us to collect in the morning. We have to leave the ship at 8am in the morning so an early start for us.

Tonight we have booked the fancy pants sushi place again for dinner. Just as we sit down Leon says 'Ah, we had a discount last time we came here as we booked it before we set sail with 50% off. After dinner we got the reciept and yep thats one pretty expensive sushi roll and this time we leave feeling annoyed with ourselves :(

So round up of this holiday - We were super excited to be cruising with Royal Caribbean again as we went with them 15 years ago and have always held them as one of the top notch cruises, this cruise though hasn't lived up to expections. The cabins are very dated and we have quite a few things wrong (8574) -
Air conditioning controller is broken
Drawer is broken
Light cover is missing
Light bulb is missing
Shower temperture isnt working
Announement speaker volume doesn't work

The staff aren't overly friendly
The food was boring and too much Indian
Ship could have been cleaner
Staff on their mobiles
Charges of 1 dollar a minute if you're late to pick your child up from kiddie club!!
No freebies for the kids - normally Dexter comes back with t-shirts, towels, bags etc

(I've added this on here for my benefit incase they ask for feedback after we leave).

Well thats it for this holiday everyone we will be returning to good old blighty tomorrow and will be home late in the evening. Clark and Kelly we'll come get Frankie on Saturday.

Oh, just before you go.... I have another poo story for you.
So Leon hasn't been to the toilet for a couple of days and today was the day of release, and oh boy did he release!! So much so he shouted out of the toilet "Hey Nicky do you want to see alot of poo - come and have a look a this!!" My word there was alot, it wasn't like Dexters one huge poo which the internet guy wistnessed but a collection of smaller poo's which fulled the whole toilet!

Sweet dreams xxx

Greece and Italy

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