Meanwhile life aboard the Perla is a hoot!
Our favorite part of the ship is the casino. It is very small with one blackjack table, one roulette table, one poker table and about a dozen slot machines. There is of course a live piano player who plays at a white grand piano with gold trim. We've been holed up at the tables nearly every night with the same group of old Greek men who smoke themselves into oblivion as they toss 50- and 100-Euro bills across the table like salt. We've been lucky and have won every night. The dealers are Serbian with names like Dragana, Igor and Slavika. They love us because we tease them and tip very well. Slavika is the manager, she is very tough and hard when dealing and has a face that could cut glass.
Naturally the live shows are monuments in tackiness. Even the posters outside the showroom are hideous -- we love it! They put on these acts where the dancers (three girls, two queeny twinks) dance in sultan and genie outfits interposed with singers in sequined gowns belting out show tunes in different languages. The dancers seem tired at times because they have other roles on the ship too. Sometimes there is a magician who makes his female assistant levitate. It's genius.
The ship itself probably hasn't been renovated since 1965. You can almost feel like Pamela Sue Martin in The Poseidon Adventure.