This morning we boarded a cruise ship in Venice, headed for the Greek Isles. Our first stop was Bari, a port city on the southeastern Italian coast. Bari was fun, but now it’s just a speck in the distance. We’re cruisin’ toward the Ionian Sea, on our way to Katakolon, Greece.
“Kata-what-alon,” you ask? Katakolon, Greece. (pronounced “ka-TA-ko-lon”). It’s a port on the western side of the Peloponnese penninsula. I know – I had never heard of it, either.
Afternoon Snack Time
Back on board after visiting Bari, it was “Afternoon Snack Time.” This is the designated time each day when certain food outlets are open and stocked with freshly prepared goodies.
Take your pick: pizza, ice cream, chicken wings, ribs, pastries, pies, and cakes. There might have been a salad bar or other healthy options, but I don’t recall seeing any. Maybe I just didn’t notice. We are on vacation, after all.
Everything is included in the price of the cruise, so just grab what you want and go. For example, every food area has a serve-yourself soft-serve ice cream machine loaded with chocolate and vanilla ice cream.
If you wanted to, you could bring a bucket and just lay on the handle until you had a bucketful of ice cream. But if you ate all that, you’d have no room left for pizza, eh?
Four cafes are dedicated to “The Afternoon Snack.” Numerous other places offer food and drinks anytime of day or night. For more serious eating, if one still has an appetite, there are ten restaurants and bars on board. Dinner is served in the main dining room on the third deck.
It’s a Floating 12-Story Building
Speaking of decks, this ship has twelve. It’s a floating 12-story building. Most cabins are on the mid and lower decks. Restaurants, bars, a casino, library, gym, spa, pools, running track, and a shopping mall are on the mid and upper decks.
How can they fit so many facilities onto one ship? By making it huge. The Costa Mediterranea is three (American) football fields long. She has a beam of more than 100 feet. (More on “beam” down below).
Our 3-football field-long, 12-story floating building can accommodate 2,680 passengers. But someone has to operate the ship, prepare all those pizzas, and do the dishes, so there’s a crew of 900.
We probably have somewhere around 3,500 shipmates on board. If we had wanted to go someplace to get away from it all, this wouldn’t have been the ideal choice. But we can “get away from it all” some other time.
The heart of the ship, at least for most passengers, is the lobby. Numerous hallways lead to the lobby, where there’s a reception desk, a bar, lounge area, and several glass elevators — the kind you can look out of as you go up or down. Careful, though — people can look in, too.
Dinnertime
When it’s time for dinner, we go down to the main dining room and are seated with our dining mates — the only other Americans on board. Both couples are doctors and their wives. Both specialize in internal medicine. In their words, they work on the plumbing.
One couple was from Miami, Florida. The other was from New York. They were very nice. We always had a good time at dinner. The food was very good, but not great. A new menu with a few new options appeared every night.
The service in the dinning room was amazing. Maybe too amazing for my humble needs. An army of dapper-looking men in starched white jackets moved deftly among the tables. If I dropped my napkin, one of them might have swooped by and grabbed it before it reached the floor. That level of service takes some getting used to.
We’ll cruise through the night and reach Katakolon tomorrow morning. Then I guess we’ll find out what Katakolon is all about, eh?
But first… we’re on a boat. We’re at sea. And sailors have a language all their own. Since we’re no longer land-lubbers, we need to know some naval terminology.
Handy Naval Terminology
Avast – Stop
Beam – the width of the ship at its widest point.
Port side – to your left, when facing the front of the boat.
Starboard – the right side, opposite of port.
Weighing anchor – No, it doesn’t mean you want to see how much the anchor weighs. (Oh come on, now!) It means lifting the anchor and shoving off.
Having “sea legs,” – you can walk around on the boat without looking like you spent too much time in the lobby bar.
And as a bonus, here is some Navel terminology:
Innie – you already know. Just look down.
Outie – The opposite of an innie. (Definitely in the minority).
To be continued…
Note: More Costa Mediterranea details are available on Cruise Critic.
