The passenger manifest revealed that there were 27 nationalities on board Dinner was served according to a fixed seating plan We had asked for a young, lively table. How, then, did we end up dining with two matching pairs of name-tagged Americans on a religious tour of Europe? They were polite but glum in that travel-weary way of people who have seen one temple too many and no longer care if it's Tuesday, Athens or Greek theme-night.Rhodes, the next day, was less of a rush than Mykonos. Keen to see the Acropolis at Lindos, we booked a shore excursion. It turned out to be a very thorough guided tour of the ruins, which overlooked a dramatic, curving bay far below. Having regaled us with the story of how St Paul the Apostle landed here, the guide looked crestfallen when a member of the religious tour group piped up: "Say, are we talking BC or AD?"I could also have done without the obligatory stop at the pottery on the way back. I skulked in the dusty car park while the other passengers wandered around a showroom bedecked with truly hideous black lacquer-ware, embossed with golden Greek gods It was time to get away. I had a quiet word with our guide, and he recommended a taverna just inside the vast, medieval walls.
It had a sunny terrace and did a fine line in red snapper and retsina.On Sunday, we woke up in the Turkish port of Kusadasi, far too late for the 6am shore excursion to Ephesus. Kusadasi lacks both charm and beaches but does have a decent souk, where I found a beautiful silk kilim in cream and burnt orange among all the designer T-shirts and fake Louis Vuitton luggage shops.The final port of call was Patmos, where there were more jewellery shops and more ouzo to drink in the quiet, sunlit square of Scala Now I really was relaxing. After just three days, mellowness had set in.The sharp crack of fireworks, shouting and bell-ringing suddenly broke the mood. A jubilant wedding procession appeared out of a narrow side-street, complete with mandolin players, singers, old ladies in black and a bride in a white, frothy dress. Despite the reminder of our floating hotel dwarfing the scene from the quayside, I felt quietly satisfied that our short perambulation had at last touched a fragment of the real Greece.Sue Bryant is editor of 'Cruise Traveller' magazine, which launches in August. Getting thereOlympic Countess and her three sister ships operate the four-day Aegean Discovery Cruise most weekends until November this year. An inside cabin costs from £568 including flights, the cruise, all meals and on-board entertainment.
The 18,000-ton Olympic Countess has a swimming pool and Jacuzzi, spacious sun decks, casino, nightclub, show lounge, beauty salon and shops and carries 814 passengers Telephone Royal Olympic Cruises on 020-7734 0805.. Cruising owes its existence to what is still one of the most popular leisure activities on board a liner: drinking. In the days of prohibition in the US, one of the few legal ways of circumventing the ban on alcohol was to sail outside US territorial waters, not with the intention of going from A to B but, as it were, from absinthe to Bacardi. Sightseeing mainly around Cuba and the Bahamas was completely tangential to imbibing. Cruising owes its existence to what is still one of the most popular leisure activities on board a liner: drinking.
