Finally getting a chance to update:

Tuesday, June 7 was Allen's birthday. We spent the day on Rhodes exploring the ancient walled city and walking through the old moat outside the castle walls. We also visited the 3rd century Doric ruins of Kamiros. In the evening, we had a performance of chamber music by a string quartet made up of students from the Royal Academy of Music.

Wednesday was spent on Crete and included an excursion to an extensive Doric hillside ruin called Lato and the Minoan site of Pyrgos on the south side of the island, dating back to 2800 BC.

Thursday we spent another day at sea, with 5 more lectures, another workout in the ship's gym, then relaxing in the sauna and large hot tub on the 9th floor at the bow. One of the lecturers showed some archival film of the WWII siege of Malta in preparation for Friday's arrival in Valletta.

We also have a classical guitarist on board along with a lounge pianist, and a dance band from Hungary (you can't imagine hearing YMCA and Tom Jones' Sex Bomb with a Hungarian accent). Also, a lounge jazz band which is described as having a "rat-pack look". I don't know what that means, but the singer does a good job of imitating Sinatra. We also had a performance of the Ramayana by Indonesian crew members.

My last entry ended up costing me 5.56 euros, due to slow internet and questions about how to use the computers by some of the other, elderly travellers, so I will cut this off now. I'm not even going to try to download photos - I'll set up a photo site when we get home.

More later, but it's time to go out and get some sun and watch the coast of Sardegna approach.

Ciao.