All the weight I lost in Spain I have gained back on this ship. To counteract this, Valerie and I have been limiting our meals 3 courses instead of 4 and ignoring the bread rolls. I’m confident that this approach is working because now I feel hungry between meals (an odd feeling on a cruise ship).

Tomorrow, we are disembarking the ship. We already bought a train ticket to Castiglione del Lago for 11:10am, so we need to get off the ship by about 10:00am to make it to the train station on time.

The Costa Deliziosa spent only 6 hours in the Piraeus (port of Athens), so there was no time for dallying. We woke up at 6:20am to prepare for today’s journey to Athens. Our ship started letting people off the ship at 8:15am and we were among the first in line. Unfortunately, we missed the 8:05 X80 bus to the acropolis, but so we caught the full-to-the-brim 8:40 bus. We quickly walked to the acropolis to try to beat the crowds.

Rick Steves calls the acropolis the greatest site of the ancient western world. It’s pretty neat and the ruins are well maintained, but it was much smaller than we expected. It is possible to walk from one end to the other in just a couple minutes (if you aren’t blocked by a tour group).

After touring the acropolis, we walked to the ancient agora (included in the acropolis ticket). As we were walking through, it started raining, so we cut our tour short and headed to the nearby metro station to return to the port. In the port area, we picked up a couple of Greek savory puff pastries to eat on our journey back to the ship. We made it back with about half an hour to spare before all-aboard time.

Today was a relaxing day at sea. For the first time, we decided to eat lunch in the dining room rather than the buffet. One annoyance about Costa is that the menus aren’t posted before the meal, so one cannot make an educated decision about whether to eat at the buffet or the dining room. After lunch, we watched other passengers play super bingo while drinking some refreshing fruity beverages.