Arrivals/The Real Beginning

Tuesday

I had arrived! At 1:15PM, after a sleepless and exhausting flight, I touched down in Athens, Greece, out of the United States for the first time in my life. And of course, the shuttle from the airport to the cruise was nowhere in sight! And I don't speak Greek so I could hardly ask anyone where it might be! By this point I was running on maybe 3 hours of sleep gathered in the last 30 hours. It's difficult trying to calculate how much time you've been awake when you've traveled through 3 time zones in the last 24 hours.

After finally locating the shuttle and arriving at port, I boarded the Carnival Vista.

Melanin poppin'

Massive ship aka my new home for the next 10 days

The first thing they had us do was take a picture and I was in no mood but took one anyway. I found my room with little trouble, walked in, and my mom started screaming (with excitement).

State room

After chatting with her and surveying the place, we went out in search of exploring, adventure, and food. We got sidetracked when it was announced everyone had to go to a security briefing but we ran into some of our 30-person party while there so it worked out. We walked up to the uppermost deck and got some photos before heading back down to change for dinner.

Friend, cousin, Neen, cousin (her hubbie)

Athens, Greece from the ship

For that first night, I wore a polka dot jumpsuit and heels because first impressions are extremely important and dinner is nothing short of a small event on cruise ships. Dinner's arrangements were basically settled that first night in the same way that once you sit in one seat for the first day of school, that seat becomes unofficially "yours" for the duration of that class. My seat was with my cousin and some mutual friends, the young adult crowd if you will, five of us, aged 23-26. Here on out when referring to us as a unit, I'll just say "the crew".

After dinner, the crew walked the ship's decks and explored some more. We tried to figure out what we wanted to do for the evening and ended up getting pizza from an all-night pizza bar, picked up some drinks for those so inclined, then went up to the highest deck on the ship in the front which was designated solely for adults 18+. We hung out, enjoyed the night air and accidentally fell asleep until close to 2AM. We all headed down to bed after we collectively woke up.

Fin.