To get to Mykonos, we had to tender over. Mykonos is a Greek Isle with a beautiful blue sea, blue sky and white-washed houses. However, when we arrived at Mykonos, the wind was so wild and high that the tenders were banging against the ship. That morning, I walked, Marjorie played bingo, and Carol read a book. We all met for lunch in the formal dining room because our Mykonos excursion was an afternoon one.

When we looked out the window and saw the tender banging against the ship and I said, “I don’t care what is going on, I don’t want to see anything that badly. I’m not going out there and I’m not getting on that ship.” And in fact, that morning, the Captain had warned us about how high the wind was. There was complete agreement within our group, “Nope, we don’t want to see anything that badly,” and we decided we would stay on the ship. Well, about that time, the Captain came on the intercom to say to all the passengers that we would not be going to Mykonos because the conditions were too dangerous to board the tenders, the winds were too high. He’s decided that it was just not worth the danger to the crew and the passengers. That was fine with us because that meant, “Woo hoo!” another day at sea to laze around and do well, not too much.

So, after lunch we put on our bathing suits, stopped and got some pina coladas, and went up to the top deck with our books. But the wind was too high so we left the top deck and we went downstairs to deck 5 (the promenade deck) which had an overhang. We were able to sit out there for the rest of the afternoon, reading, dozing and watching the sea. It was absolutely fabulous. We later learned that apparently a number of passengers were completely outraged by the fact that they couldn’t go to Mykonos. Our thought was to put all of them on a tender and let them go, but of course that’s not very nice to say.

The Captain came on a little bit later in the day to say that he had worked out an arrangement for us to go to our next port early to make up for the fact that we wouldn’t be able to go to Mykonos. Our next port was Kusadasi, Turkey. For those of you who’ve been blog readers from the very beginning, you might remember that one of the earliest positing detailed my trip to Istanbul, Turkey. I have very warm feelings about the Turkish people and Turkey as a country, and have to say that I was very, very sad about the bombings that occurred in Istanbul this summer. I am keeping the people of Istanbul in my thoughts and prayers as they weather the storm of that horrible tragedy.

Back to Mykonos and not being able to dock . . . the Captain came on board and said that he had obtained the right to enter the port of Kusadasi, Turkey early that evening so that folks who were stir crazy, not including the “Fabulous at 50” crew, could get off the ship and go into Kusadasi that night. Opting to stay on board the ship and enjoy the extra day at sea, we got dressed for dinner. After dinner, we went to the evening show, which was entitled “Now and Forever.” It was songs from Broadway and it was pretty fun. I really enjoyed that show. The show featured the Royal Caribbean singers and dancers and I tell you, they went through all the different Broadway shows. I have to confess, and I know some are going to poke fun, my favorite was the songs from Mama Mia. We were dancing, singing and having a good time! Welcome to middle age, you’ll be there one day, too.

After that we went up to the request hour at the disco, danced a bit, requested a few tunes, then we went down to catch a game called “Name that Romantic Tune.” We weren’t very good at it, but that was o.k. because there were a many current songs about which we had to say, “o.k., I don’t have a clue.” We were thinking (I was at least… I won’t speak for my two compatriots) that the game would focus on the old standards, but there’s romance from every decade and well, I have to admit, we didn’t do too well on the recent decade. We needed the help of a youngin’ to win. The waiters, who were much younger than us, had mercy on us and gave us hints, and in fact answers, but we didn’t want to cheat, so we didn’t yell them out. After that humiliating experience ;-), we went to Karaoke Star Search which was quite remarkable, for a number of reasons. Then we walked out on the deck and watched all the people who were going into Kusadasi and coming back and that, in itself, was a very entertaining site.