DAY 140- DAY 134 CRYSTAL SERENITY

WELCOME TO ATHENS, GREECE - UNTIL NEXT TIME CRYSTAL SERENITY

Catherine M., thank you very much for your comments.  We do have more trips booked for next year and as we get closer will Blog about those.  In the meantime we still have more to go with this trip as we make our way to Vienna for the River Cruise.

JoAnn...Thank you so much for your comments.  We are glad you enjoyed following our adventure.  We wish you a wonderful time in December for the Christmas Market cruise on the Crystal Ravel River Cruise Vessel.  

Jen...Thank you so much for your comments.  We are glad that you have enjoyed our descriptions and photos.  We will be sure to share  our thoughts on the River Cruise.  

This is the dinner menu from Waterside from last evening.

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We finished our packing late yesterday afternoon.  We are shipping the majority of our luggage home and taking the remaining pieces with us to Vienna.

Penthouse  Attendant Lunghar and  Stateroom Attendant Anastasija provided turndown service right before we had dinner.  The stateroom attendants assist the Penthouse Attendants for their first contract with Crystal Cruises.  Assuming all goes well they are assigned standard rooms to take care of on their own for their next contract.  This provides a great transition period and the opportunity to learn.  As mentioned, Lunghar took care of us on a couple of World Cruises and other voyages and it has been great to have her as our Penthouse Attendance for these past two voyages.  

With the spacious dining room in our suite we have been enjoying the meals on this final seven day cruise in our room.  

We began with a flute of Champagne to celebrate our love for one another and an amazing adventure on-board Crystal Serenity. 

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We had two courses.

We began with Caesar salad from the Prego Italian Restaurant.  

We had Pizza for our main entree which is prepared in what is called the cold galley at Waterside.  

We have enjoyed so many wonderful meals throughout the 134 days we have sailed Crystal Serenity.  The majority of meals we have had have come from Waterside.  We love the diversity of the menu and the ability to order from both the Modern Cuisine Menus and the Crystal Classics Menu.  I can't think of any restaurant on land or at sea that provides two menus as Waterside does.  The cuisine has been fabulous, as well as the service and we love the complete redesign of the restaurant which was made in the dry dock late last year.  

We have also enjoyed many memorable meals at the Prego Italian Restaurant.  We love not only the cuisine but the service and the overall ambience of the dining venue.  Dining at Prego is similar to dining at an intimate restaurant in ones hometown.  

We love Umi Umi which is the Japanese Specialty Restaurant.  We enjoy it so much we try to limit going there to two times per cruise of 14 days or more.  This is because the food is truly special so we don't want to go there often so when we do go we look forward to the wonderful cuisine with the unique sauces and other flavoring which make this restaurant so unique.

We have also enjoyed the cuisine from Silk which is the Asian restaurant serving Chinese cuisine.  While we only wen to Churrascaria which is the Brazilian Restaurant one time we think this is a terrific option for those wanting a casual meal and found the food to be tasty.

We have also enjoyed the meals we have had in our room both in the rooms we had for most of our time on-board Crystal Serenity and over the past sixteen days when we moved to the suite we are presently in.

We slept well as we sailed to our final port of call of Athens, Greece.  For only the second time of the cruise Keith did not work out in the morning.  

The only hiccup was that sometime after 2:00  AM we  had now water.  The problem was restored around 5:00 AM.  Maybe something about end of cruises as in Venice on the morning the Monte Carlo cruise ended, we lost power for 30 minutes which also resulted in no water.  With some people disembarking Serenity as early as 3:00 AM today the timing to lose water was not good.  We are thankful that it was restored and that we were not in the middle of a shower when the water went out.

​We enjoyed coffee in our room as we got ready to leave Serenity this morning.  These are photos from 6:30 AM this morning as the sun was rising.

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We enjoyed our final breakfast.  We wished Rao our very best and look forward to seeing him next year.

Last evening  Rao  had asked if we wanted something special for breakfast such as Pancakes.  We thanked him but decided to keep to breakfast of cereal.  

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This has been an amazing adventure and we have enjoyed each and every day on Crystal Serenity.  As many times as we have sailed Crystal for us it is similar to a fine wine as it gets better overtime. We adore the people who comprise team Crystal Serenity.  We have enjoyed so many memorable moments with them.  They have become our extended family.  We love to talk with them, hear about their home countries and families, and we truly appreciate all they do to make each of our sailings special. They are truly amazing and we look forward to returning to Crystal Serenity.  ​

We left our room at 9:30 AM.  We were asked to meet at the Crystal Plaza near the Concierge desk at 9:45 AM, fifteen minutes prior to our scheduled Crystal Cruises private transfer.  When the vehicle arrived we were escorted out to the terminal by the concierge.  We claimed our luggage, went through customs/immigration and turned over five large pieces of luggage to Luggage Concierge who will hold our luggage in Athens and send it home to arrive sometime after we return home.  

We were driven to the Athens International Airport for our afternoon flight to London Heathrow.  

Something interesting.  We received an e-mail from the airline to arrive to Athens Airport three hours before flight due to the time it takes to check in for the flight, get through security and for a final security check at the gate.  Two things:  There is no security check at the gate and the airline check-in counter didn’t open until two nd one half hours before the flight.  Go figure. LOL

Our flight to London Heathrow was uneventful.  After getting through customs/immigration we made our way to the Sofitel Hotel located adjacent to Terminal 5 where we are staying for the night.  We have stayed at this hotel several times

Following is the daily Reflections program for today's disembarkation and also the program for those embarking today.

Cheers,

Anne Marie & Keith