With the kids at college, a significant birthday coming up, as well as a significant anniversary, my husband, Dave, decided NOW was the time to enjoy an extravagant vacation excursion. A few years back a group he was active in organized a short relocation cruise for members and he’d enjoyed it thoroughly. I wasn’t able to go, but he was enthusiastic and thought a full cruise would be the perfect way to for us to celebrate.

It took a while to persuade me.

He started looking for the perfect combination of ports of call and length at sea in the spring of 2013. He’d come up with options and I’d shoot them down, because, really, I hadn’t bought into the whole cruise idea. And then he found a package called Greek Isles and Ancient Wonders that sailed from Athens on October 4. The ship was the Queen Elizabeth and the company was Cunard.

He sent me the link and before I’d delved very deeply I was hooked. My focus was not the ship, or the cruise provider, but the destinations. Ancient Wonders was packed full of all those places I had longed to visit since I’d studied ancient history at university, too many years before. I didn’t know if I would like cruising or not, but I was quite sure I was going to enjoy the ports of call.