Not a lot to write about today. We woke up in our lovely balcony cabin at eight o’clock and made our way up to the Avon restaurant for breakfast, enjoying bacon, egg, sausage and mushrooms washed down with orange juice and coffee. We didn’t have to be out of 9088 until 11.00am, so we had a look at the Daily Times programme to see if there was anything we fancied doing this morning.
There was a game of baggo on at 9.30am in the Lido Bar, so we went down there, where the usual crowd of people were waiting. Then entertainment host Ken arrived and set up the baggo board, and we took our turns to play. Trevor was pretty good, but I let the side down by completely missing the board with a couple of my beanbags.
We popped outside on deck, where we could see that the Balmoral was going to have company in port today. We could see the gigantic NCL ship Norwegian Viva slowly manoevring into her berth opposite. It looked hideous, with water slides and many decks of balconies making it look like a big ungainly block of flats.
Afterwards, we decided to go ashore again. The leather belt that Trevor had bought yesterday was far too big for him, so he wanted to take it back to exchange. In the meantime, we returned to 9088 to collect our rucksacks to put them in the card room for safekeeping until it was time to disembark. We had a last look around the cabin to ensure we hadn’t forgotten anything, then reluctantly left 9088 and took our bags along to the card room. One of them contained the bottle of cava for consumption later on. 🙂
We disembarked the Balmoral, then strolled along the busy harbour and out onto the streets of the Old Town once again, and Trevor successfully exchanged his belt. As we continued walking along, we spotted a couple of the stray cats and I retrieved the bag of cat biscuits out of the rucksack and shook it. As soon as the cats recognised the sound of the biscuits rattling, they came running… not just them, around a dozen of them, their furry bodies all milling around at our feet. We tried to ensure that the biscuits were divided equally, but some of the bigger cats bullied the small ones out of the way and snatched their share. We therefore had to ensure that the little cats still managed to get some. I took some photos of Trevor feeding and petting the cats; there were so many I couldn’t get them all in! 🙂
Once the bag of cat food was all gone, we continued on our way, the proprietors of nearby bars and cafés trying to tempt us in. As it was our last day, I decided a cold beer would go down very well, so we sat at an outside table and Trevor ordered an Americano coffee while I ordered a small beer, thinking I would get 330ml or something like that. I couldn’t believe what the barman brought me…
It was a large, boot shaped glass that contained a litre of beer! Apparently the large ones held two litres. Blimey… I hadn’t been expecting that! Trevor had to help me out with it. 🙂
Afterwards we decided to go back to the Balmoral for some lunch; we might as well make the most of the time we still had on board, as we didn’t have to disembark until 3.45pm to get the coach to the airport.
As we walked along towards our ship, I had to take a photo of Balmoral alongside Norwegian Viva, just for a size comparison. Balmoral looked tiny next to the NCL ship, but it’s quality that counts, not quantity. 🙂
We enjoyed a good lunch; I had a selection of cold meats and cheeses with crisp salad. They always do really good salads on board, with a great choice of vegetables. Then we made our way to the card room to retrieve the bottle of cava from Trevor’s rucksack. We took it up to the Lido Bar and exchanged it for a cold bottle, and asked for two glasses. 🙂
We then sat outside on deck, enjoying the chilled fizz and looking around at our fellow passengers as well as the port of Rhodes beyond. This had been a great little cruise; our only complaint was that it hadn’t been long enough!
As we had no cabin to go back to for an afternoon power nap, we each procured a sunlounger and, lowering the back to make it flat, lay down on there for half an hour or so.
Soon we heard the announcements for disembarkation, and to start making our way to Deck 4 and the gangway. We shouldered our rucksacks and walked down the stairs to swipe our cards for the last time and leave the ship. It was then just a matter of collecting our luggage and boarding the coach to the airport for our flight home.
Another fabulous cruise had come to an end; in fact it was our last cruise of 2025. 🙁
But we have five cruises booked for next year, so watch this space… 😀 😀
