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I woke up at 6:15am, looked out the window to see the cliffs of Santorini. The sun had not yet come over the cliff and I was so thrilled and overwhelmed by the beauty of this place, it gave me a tear or two. Fortunately we had no tour today which meant that we would not be ruled be schedules and could leisurely enjoy our day… or so we thought. As we were in a port that did not have docks, we would be tendered to shore. The first tender came at 7:30am, a little earlier than was planned. We also noticed that we would not be alone on this day trip. Both the Holland American Veendam and Westerdam were sharing the port with us, which turned out to be a bit of a problem. With 2500 on our ship, 1700 on the Westerdam, 1200 on the Veendam and 500 on the Golden Prince (a small cruise vessel), it made for an awfully busy day at Santorini. As we got off our tender, we could smell Donkey dung, but ironically we did not see any at the bottom of the clifff. We immediately went up the stairs which led us
to the gondola to the top. This gondola takes you straight up in 2 minutes all for the bargain price of $4.00 Euros one way. What a cash cow that is. We scanned the rugged cobblestone streets of Fira, which were difficult and uncomfortable to walk on. I had not anticipated such rugged cobblestones and wore my dainty little sandals. That was a mistake, however, I did manage to make it back in one piece without falling. Note to self: Only wear runners or sturdy mountain sandals to Santorini next time. The view from the top was staggering. Mom started to look into the many tourist shops that lined the block, which seemed to go on indefinitely. Much of the tourist merchandise was similar to what we saw in the other Greek ports. There is very little difference from one to the next, with the exception of the price. Prices can jump up an additional 50% for the same merchandise at another store. You really have to know your prices.
I knew that it would be nice to get to another part of Santorini and mom suggested Oia (sounds like “eea”). We headed on to the bus terminal as
we knew that it was inexpensive and a good way to travel. Unfortunately that turned out to be a very long wait. Although the schedule says the bus comes every ½ hour, we ended up waiting more than an hour until we finally got on our bus. What a shit show of a bus system. You cannot pay for a ticket ahead of time, thus you wait for a bus only to find out that when one arrives it isn’t the bus you need to get on. You finally find your bus and people who have waited 5 minutes get on, while people who have waited an hour do not. Not a good system - in fact there was no system at all and the Greek men who were behind the counters were of absolutely no help whatsoever. The bus terminal was packed with about 250 confused people. Busses would back up and people would have to quickly run out of the way. We met up with two women were were on the Westerdam, Cheryl and Delores, and asked them if they would like to share a cab. They agreed to it, but then a bus arrived and we were
able to finally get on. It was $1.20 Euro to take the 12 minute bus ride to Oia. However, the wait was worth it. We got to Oia and looked down upon the most incredible views I have ever seen in my life. Pictures have depicted it well, but nothing is like seeing it for real. I went snap happy and just couldn’t get enough. What a photographers paradise!
I remember asking one of the vendors where I could take a picture of the famous blue domed church. She laughed and told me that there are 365 of those churches on Santorini. I guess I had lots of opportunities to take photos then. ;-)
We did a little bit of shopping, but the prices in Oia were really high and ended up not buying anything. The heat was also a little overbearing, so we found an absolutely glorious patio that happened to serve a very nice Greek lunch. I ordered 3 side dishes, stuffed grape leaves, tzadziki and saganaki. Everything was great. However, I will say that the Saganaki is better at home. The cheese that was offered was so thick and hard. Tasty, but the texture was
off. Mom ordered a Calamari dish that came with shrimp, however when the dish arrived it was only shrimp. Apparently they made a mistake on the menu and the Calamari Dinner was supposed to read Shrimp dinner. When her dish arrived, not only did it not have Calamari, but it was the full shrimp with head and eyeballs. It did not make for a very satisfying meal for her and so I gave her one of my stuffed grape leaves and some saganaki. Cheryl also offered up some of her stuffed peppers which were awesome. We all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly as we had the most beautiful view you could imagine from our patio. Life was good!
After about 1 hour of shopping around and not finding much, mom started to get tired. So we went down to the bus terminal at 3:15pm only to find out that taxis were in short supply and that the next bus was not going to come until 4:30pm. This was a bit scary as we had to be back on the ship by 5:30pm. Apparently some people were literally almost in fist fights over taxis. Arghhhh! We all thought of creative ways to get back to Fira, one of which led to a potential bus ride on the Holland American tour bus. Just before we were about to get on the bus, a Greek lady appeared in front of me and asked how many there were of us. I said 4. She said $20 Euros to get back to Fira for 4 people. I thought… great! Let’s go. So we all got on a beautifully air conditioned small bus back to Fira. It was 3:45pm. We made it back to Fira at 4:00pm and immediately figured out that the lineup to get onto the gondola was about an hour long. So we waited an hour in this line to finally get onto a tender and get back to the ship. For the 8 hours that we had on Santorini, almost half of that time was spent waiting to get somewhere. Very disappointing when you think about it. I will definitely mention that to the cruise line. They really should have warned us how much time it would take to get back on the ship. It doesn’t make much sense to have over 6000 people in port on the same day. It’s just too much. There’s only 30 taxies on the whole island!
All that waiting around gave me and mom a sunburn on the parts that we missed getting lotion on. Oh well, a sunburn from Santorini couldn’t be all that bad. :-) If you have to get lost some place on earth, Santorini would be it!
Tomorrow off to Mykonos.... I hope they have better transportation.
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david
non-member comment
transportation woes
I can feel your pain...waiting and waiting just to get to and fro kind of sucks. But, even with the short time you had there, it sounds like you still had a great time. Save the place in memory, and make a point to go back, maybe not on a cruise, next time.