In a manner of speaking, I grew up on Puget Sound. Born in Seattle, raised in Lynnwood, I am no stranger to ferry boat rides. Washington State ferry lines criss-cross the Sound all day and night, and I can’t count the number of times I took advantage of taking the “shortcut” across the water. 
So when I read that we’d be taking a ferry to the island of Mykonos, I thought it was no big deal. But I thought wrong. There are at least eight complete levels on Paros, the Blue Star ferry we took, and as we waited on the dock in Pireaus, I could see that it was not the biggest ship in their fleet.
Some of us had “assigned seats,” and others, like me, had the run of the boat, and I took full advantage of that fact. I admit I “got lost” quite a few times, but I had hours to find my way around, 
and by now could recognize other “friendly faces” belonging to our tour group, both from Bus 1 and Bus 2.
Onboard, there were many places to sit and relax, both indoors and out, and many “snack bars” where a person could get a cup of coffee and/or a sugary sweet.
Down below, there were two levels dedicated to vehicles, some of them very, very BIG, and a place to store our luggage, which we had hauled up the ramp ourselves. Although the tour advertises “porters,” that doesn’t mean you won’t need to have some strong suitcase-dragging muscles, especially if your luggage gets heavier at every port due to your insistence upon boosting the visited country’s economy!
At first, I thought it was “necessary” to snap photos of every port of call throughout our excursion, but seriously, once you’ve seen the whitewashed buildings of one island port after another, all clustered close to the water’s edge, they really do begin to all look alike!
And when we finally arrived at our destination, the island of Mykonos, I hardly had time for any more photo ops, as we had to scramble below, locate our suitcases pi
led against the ship’s exterior walls, to forge ahead as one big moving mass of humanity, making me think we were like lemmings to the land.