It is another gorgeous morning here in Piraeus, which we make the most of by walking around the Marina to the Love Piraeus sign, then down to Votsalakia beach where all the local ladies swim, and back around again to the apartment – which you can see here in the circled picture we took from the other side of the marina.

A couple hours later, cleaned up and packed up, we hit the streets to meet our Uber driver, who even though the GPS map clearly shows where we are, parks on the Marina road in front of Volcano.  After flagging him down and directing him to our location we load up the bags and head off to the port.  Of course, he goes to the wrong pier, even though we did tell him the correct pier.  We tried directing him there, but he didn’t really listen and just went to the city pier, not the berths near the Lion statue where we the Journey is located.  Once he gets directions from someone at the city pier, he eventually (after once again going the wrong way, which once again we told him not to go there) gets us to our ride for the next 3 weeks!  Phew.  We weren’t in any rush, so no harm no foul, and he was very sweet and apologetic. 

Bags unloaded and handed off, we appear to be one of the first people at the pier (no one reading this is surprised, we know) and are escorted to our priority waiting area – where we are indeed the only people here!  As we wait, more folks begin to show up, making us feel a little less crazy for being here so early – and pretty soon we are allowed to board, heading straight up to Discoveries to make our specialty dining reservations with Jeannie who was our pal on Quest (she nicknamed us her First Couple because we were first to book the back to back segment with her at the time). 

Reservations complete, we hit hang out on the Sunset Bar deck with our first drinks and first (and one of extremely few) Windows lunch.  Once the place starts filling up, we wander off in search of someplace out of the way to sit, only to realize that our cabins are available (early, nice), so we head there, dumping our packs and changing into our gym gear.  We know we want to hit the gym early to avoid the raffle mess up there, so even before our bags appear, we head up there to do a quick 30 minutes or so on the treadmills, then return to our great concierge cabin (the little bit of extra space is really nice in here) to unpack and wander some more.

Later, we hit Discoveries for dinner, scoring our table #4, then to the Welcome Aboard show and then to the balcony for the rest of the evening. Let the Med and Spain intensive journey begin (no pun intended!).