August 31st through September 7th my husband and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary with a cruise on Virgin Voyages’ Resilient Lady to the Greek Islands! The trip was a memorable one and I will chronicle each port call in subsequent posts. First, I would like to say how awesome Virgin Voyages was! https://www.virginvoyages.com/ Currently, there’s a lot of chatter about other cruiselines, in particular, Carnival. That brand has been sullied to some degree by the controversial behavior of some of the guests. What I like about Virgin is that its ADULT ONLY! I did a lot of advance research (Reddit Groups) for Virgin Voyages and learned as much as I could about the experience of other sailors (the term Virgin uses for its guests!) There were very few negative comments. We booked late June and waited anxiously for the excursion and dining options to open up. Dining options were available mid-July and we added on the Splash of Romance package which entitled us to priority boarding, 3 hours at the Redemption Spa, shake for champagne, and 3 deliveries of treats to our cabin. We opted for an exterior cabin with a terrace. We arranged for a flight from Savannah/Hilton Head Airport to Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International, and on to Athens International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos. We flew in Delta Airlines comfort section and the meals served onboard were excellent. We departed Atlanta at 4:30 PM EST, and arrrived in Athens around 10:00 AM Athens time. We used Welcome Pickups https://www.welcomepickups.com/ for transport from the airport to the Marina. We appreciated not having to worry about this logistical aspect and our driver, Nasos Thanasas was waiting for us upon our clearance of customs. He was friendly, had a clean car (Mercedes E Class AMG) and gave us a guided tour enroute to Paraeus Cruise Terminal. The exemplary customer service exhibited by Virgin was apparent upon our arrival to the terminal. We were promptly greeted, bags were tagged, we received our arm bracelets (which are used to access the cabin and track our expenditures) and we were ushered to a shuttle bus for the purpose of going into town while we awaited our embarkation timeslot. We enjoyed a light lunch downtown (which was dead due to it being Sunday) and anxiously awaited a return ride to the terminal to start our adventure! We were picked up in town and arrived back to Piraeus where we were gathered with others that had priorty boarding. At the appointed time, we boarded the ship and settled into our spacious central sea terrace cabin (1314A Deck 13) and awaited departure!