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LIVE from Celebrity Reflection - 4/27/18 - 10 nt Italy & Greek Isles Cruise


WonderMan3
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[how much was the driver for the whole day quote=WonderMan3;55987965]Hello all. I am struggling a bit to keep this a truly LIVE blog as we have just been so busy having fun! So we are LIVE with a one day delay. [emoji1]

 

Anyway, on Wednesday morning we woke up early at 6:15am as we had to meet our guide for the day at 8:30 and we wanted to eat breakfast first. We went up to Oceanview since Luminae didn’t open until 7:30. On our way to breakfast we ran into the Suites Manager Sylvia just outside our cabin. We caught her eye and asked her if she remembered us from our Eclipse cruise with her last year when she was Michael’s Club concierge. She said she remembered our names when she saw them on the Suites passenger list but she couldn’t place our faces (understandable with all the guests she has met since January 2017). She told us she is only on Reflection as a fill in while the normal Suites Manager is on vacation. She got on for the Transatlantic so this was her second Reflection cruise. Her normal ship is Solstice where she is also Suites Manager. We gave her positive feedback on our butler which she appreciated and she asked if we would be attending the helipad sailaway that afternoon (This was our second helipad sailaway invite for this cruise). We told her we would see how we felt after our day of touring.

 

At Oceanview, I enjoyed my favorite Eggs Benedict with some bacon, corned beef hash, potatoes and hash browns. Mike had his standard scrambled eggs and bacon.

 

After breakfast we went back to the cabin to gather our stuff for the day and were off the ship by 8:20. The tour guides are allowed to enter into the dock at this port so it was just a short walk from the gangway to meet our driver guide. I booked through Rhodes Taxi and Limo Service. I had arranged everything through the owner?manager? Nicholas who was on the pier along with his guides. He introduced himself and our driver guide for the day Dominic. Will share our activities for the day in my next post.4950b3c2069f207f64e9404683f301ed.jpg7430194eb1d9085e25f11efe435aa5de.jpg

 

 

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Adam you are a gem honestly thanks again. Love that sunset shot and all your others. I’m so excited about this trip. Even more so now after reading ur threads. Ita so romantic and you’re a sweet couple. I’m going with my

Love also and after Paris I’m aure Santorini is the mot romantic place on earth. Lookin forward to ur few days reviews.

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After getting back onboard we relaxed in our cabin for awhile. I went up to the pool bar to grab my afternoon pina colada and then Sujith stopped by to drop off our afternoon scones. While he was there I asked him about the brunch at Tuscan on Saturday the sea day and he called to get times (11-1) and a price, $39 per person. He said he would get us a menu so we could decide. I also asked him what the price was for La Petit Chef and it was indeed $55 per person as had been projected so we decided to pass. I also asked Sujith to cancel my spa appointment for Saturday so that we could just relax all day without any places to be.

 

Mike took a nap for awhile and then we headed up to the top deck to enjoy the sailaway from Santorini.0e813eed5c9205997596970cd8387ef8.jpg92132f4e1e2a81766842f6f4b95bfaf2.jpgca06f9eb819f835706983b28e0ab64d7.jpg714c2e38c3f91ef970675b7d2c84d544.jpga32c84967f17d07b8aa5606e00485511.jpg

 

 

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We are on this cruise 18 th May. Thankyou so so much for a wonderful timeline of your days events and trips. Especially the daily cruise sheet. (Wondering if I could be cheeky to ask. I would love if You could scan each day sheet with your phone and email to me if that wouldn’t be too much trouble.

 

Ita been amazing cruising with you. You are a fun couple.

 

 

 

Also wondering. We are on a classics drink package. Do u think we need to upgrade to enjoy the matini bar drinks or would we be ok in the martini bar on classic package.

 

 

 

Are there many gym classes to attend and if so is ther any informon the classes so I can pre plan ?

 

 

 

How are the shows.

 

 

 

Many many thanks again your reviews are awesome.

 

 

 

You’re welcome. You should be able to download any of the Dailies photos if you click them.I know you can do that with the app. I’m sorry but I don’t have time to email them all.

 

For the beverage package it’s a lot easier to just upgrade your package. You can alsopay the price difference per drink to get the Martini Bar drinks. You need to just price it out and make a comparison as to what you think is best for you. There are threads on here that list all the drink prices and beverage package pricing so you can calculate.

 

I’ve never used the gym so don’t know about any programs. Sorry. And we haven’t done any shows this cruise.

 

 

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thanks so much

 

 

appreciate it

 

You’re welcome. You should be able to download any of the Dailies photos if you click them.I know you can do that with the app. I’m sorry but I don’t have time to email them all.

 

For the beverage package it’s a lot easier to just upgrade your package. You can alsopay the price difference per drink to get the Martini Bar drinks. You need to just price it out and make a comparison as to what you think is best for you. There are threads on here that list all the drink prices and beverage package pricing so you can calculate.

 

I’ve never used the gym so don’t know about any programs. Sorry. And we haven’t done any shows this cruise.

 

 

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Thank you! Only the selfies and food shots are on IPhone. The main photos are with my digital camera.

 

 

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Absolutely fabulous photos! What camera are you using? I understand that the main aspect is your artistic skills, but nevertheless :)

 

 

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Edited by Kiwifromkiev
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Thanks very much for doing your review. We get on The Reflection tomorrow, but doing a different itinerary. We are lucky to be sailing on an Azamara cruise in October taking in many of the ports that you’ve been to, so your posts have really helped.

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After enjoying Santorini’s sailaway we went back to the cabin to get ready for dinner. We dined at Luminae. Mike and I both had the same starter and entree, Fennel Soup and Roasted Chicken, both of which were excellent. For dessert Mike had the Hibiscus Parfait (forgot to snap a photo), which he didn’t like, while I passed on dessert.

 

After dinner we went to the casino where they were having a slot tournament for players who earned more than 1000 points. Mike had gone to bed by the time the tournament started. The single prize was $500. This was actually my first interaction with the casino host since the cruise began and it was Day 7. Despite Mike and I being in the casino every night and being Sapphire level Blue Chip members he had never introduced himself to us. This same thing happened to us on Silhouette in January; the hosts interact with the players next to never, only at the required events published in the Daily. Anyway, I placed 6th out of 8 players in the tournament so no prize. I played for a little bit after that and then went to bed.af3d78249ecb25d8cf86d741b8884e5e.jpgdd73cc4a1261efc75851817a44417cc8.jpg8b335efeaeea2667c05fec09e7b082da.jpgfaec5506a8240212db149a6b9ff78601.jpgf72ca12439e912611733f76459d2e09b.jpgf5689a9efaba370d5088db8c89750f7c.jpg

 

 

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Absolutely fabulous photos! What camera are you using? I understand that the main aspect is your artistic skills, but nevertheless :)

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

 

Thank you! The majority of my photos are taken with my Olympus PEN E-PL7. A few others like selfies and food shots with my IPhone 6sPlus.

 

 

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On Friday morning we arrived in Athens. Since we had to meet our driver guide at 7:45 we needed to get up early at 5:45 in order to have time for breakfast. Looking out our balcony as the sun was rising I caught this interesting shot. I was focusing on the sun but a lamp post for the port got in the shot and gave it a totally different feel, almost like some alien planet in Star Wars. We ate breakfast at Oceanview since Luminae wasn’t open that early. I was feeling hungry so I had a ham, cheese and bacon omelette with a waffle and hash browns and bacon while Mike stuck to his old standby scrambled eggs and bacon.

 

We left the ship around 7:20 as the instructions where to meet our driver guide were not totally clear to us as we had not been to this port in many years. But when we exited the terminal building all the guides were waiting there so it was very easy. Our driver guide was from George’s Taxi. He wasn’t there right away as we were early. When he showed up at 7:30 he was happy to see us there already and ushered us quickly to his vehicle so we could beat the traffic. Our driver’s name was Mikos. He was one of George’s longest working guides having been doing this for about 35 years. I set up a custom tour with George’s to visit the Ancient Agora with a guide, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, Lycabettus Hill and then heading out of Athens down to Cape Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon. Cost for the tour was 260 Euros for a full day tour plus 90 Euros for the guide at the Agora.cc7649fbf97bb013dccdb35882e92d07.jpg4b0b143ca655a38c8b016a01d3f2a098.jpga87574db0b126489b6bc98f38f08e7e4.jpg

 

 

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Could you please find out how much the cocktail and non-alcoholic cocktail of the day is? Anyone know if you can get preloaded drinks cards. ...I want to give my adult children one if possible, rather than risk saying change things to the room and having a panic attack when I see the final invoice.

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Continuing with Friday’s touring... (obviously this is not LIVE anymore as I debarked today but I will continue to finish out chronicling the trip)

 

We left the port just after 7:30am. Mikos our driver guide said we had a little extra time since we were 15 minutes early so he took us on a drive past some of Piraeus’ marinas and made a stop at one of the more scenic ones. As we continued our drive he stopped at a street corner to buy some local bread from a vendor so we could try it. While driving throughout the day Mikos would play different informative videos that gave some background about the things we were going to see that day. Our first tour stop was at the Ancient Agora which lies near the bottom of the Acropolis. This was a marketplace and commerce area back in ancient times. Mikos dropped us off to meet up with Vivi our guide for the Agora. We toured through the ruins area including the amazingly well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus. Then we toured the adjacent museum that featured artifacts from the site. Vivi was one of the best guides we’ve had giving us a thorough background of the Agora site and a lot of other Greek history to support that. After that Mikos picked us up and drove us up to Lycabettus Hill where we could get an expansive view over all of Athens. This was followed by a stop to see the changing of the guard then on to a stop for us to do a quick self-tour of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

 

Done with the activities in the main part of Athens, Mikos drive us along the “Athens Riviera” a Resort area along the water. It was here that we stopped for lunch at a restaurant Mikos recommended whose name I didn’t get. It was mediocre though. The fried meatballs were kind of flavorless and the fried cheese a bit rubbery. The souvlaki was okay though. From here we drove on to our last stop which was the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion. Up on a bluff overlooking the sea the temple has a magnificent location. But there’s not much too see and you can basically see the whole thing in about 10 minutes. Not necessarily worth the 90 minute trip there each way. I’d only recommend this as a stop if you’ve already done everything else in Athens proper. From the Temple it was back to the ship. We returned at 4pm. Tour was 8.5 hours. Cost was 260 Euro plus 90 Euro for the Agora guide. Mikos was a great driver guide so I would definitely recommend George’s Taxi for your Athens touring. http://www.taxigreece.com

 

My WiFi is barely working at the moment so will have to post photos from this day tomorrow.

 

 

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