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Published: November 19th 2008
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Santorini is that picturesque little Cliffside Greek Island that you see in almost any movie that takes place in the Greek Isles. It’s an absolutely gorgeous place where everywhere you look is something to beautiful to take in.
It’s quite an effort to get to there though. They have a very tiny dock at the base of the cliff, and that’s about all they have down by the water. So we had to tender there—that means we all pile into very tiny boats that shuttle 50 or so people at a time to the dock. As a crew member this is even more of a hassle because we have to wait until all of the guests get off before we can leave. So when we dock at 10am, we could be waiting around until 1 or 2 in the afternoon to actually get on a tender.
Luckily, this was my day off and we didn’t have to be back on board until 9:30pm, so I had all the time in the world. I got off the ship around 1pm, took a tender to the dock and from there you have three options for getting up to the Fira (the
closest city to the dock all the way on top of the cliff). You can walk the almost vertical climb and do your best impersonation of a mountain goat. There is a trail that kind of zigzags up to the top, but it’s quite a hike and your calves would hate you by the time you got there. You could hire a mule to take you up the trail, which can’t be the most comfortable ride, but it’s touristy authentic, and at least the mules calves would bear the burden (do mules have calves?). Or you can take the cable car up, which only cost crewmembers one euro and takes a lot less time. It’s like one of those sky tram ski lift like things that holds up to 6 people per car.
The first thing I did when I got off the cable car was find the best view of the area, which was almost everywhere I looked. Every step I took I wanted to take another picture. The whole town of Fira is shops and restaurants. If you walk away from the cliff side, you can find the main street that will get you around the island.
I wandered around the shops for a while, and then I ran into a few friends and I tagged along with them the rest of the day.
We decided to rent ATV’s to go around the island. They’re basically three wheeled off road motorcycles, and we found the cheapest deal. Ten euro for the entire day and we just had to return them by 7pm before the rental place closed. My friend Kaitlyn and I decided to split the cost of one and just take turns driving. We had to put gas in them ourselves, so after a quick trip to the nearest petrol station, we headed out for Oia Village. We somehow ended up taking the long way around which basically took us along the coast of the backside of Santorini. It was an amazing ride, although a different kind of picturesque part of the island. The backside is totally flat and there isn’t a lot there, so you saw the occasional house, but for the most part it was just fields.
Oia is an amazing place. It’s also where a lot of those aforementioned movies get filmed, so you’d probably recognize images of the gleaming white
houses layered along the cliff. I actually saw the exact house that was used in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (not that I’m terribly excited about that fact, but it was the only movie I could recall off the top of my head that I knew was filmed there). Unfortunately, I think Mamma Mia was filmed on another island. There are a lot of jewelry stores and places to buy paintings—most of which are of Santorini. There are also a few sculpture and stonework places. I don’t know how people buy such large and heavy items and manage to get them home, but I think that would require thinking way outside of my tax bracket. Oia also has quite a few buildings just built right into the cliffs. How weird would it be to buy a home that was built into a cliff? The insulation must be fantastic.
We spent an hour or so wandering around Oia, and then we headed out toward the Red Sand beach which was on the completely opposite side of the island. This time we took the quick route around the island, which I think is a prettier drive because it goes along the
hillside and overlooks the flat coastal area. It reminded me of driving along the California coastline only much less populated. We passed back through Fira and got more gas. We never wanted to fill the tanks because we didn’t want to return the ATV’S with more gas than they gave us, so we tried to guess just the right amount that we needed to get where we were going.
We made the long drive to the Red Sand beach and snapped some amazing pictures. We just hiked to the view of the beach though instead of walking all the way down to the beach itself because by the time we got there it was starting to get cold, so the idea of going to the beach seemed unnecessary.
We started the drive back to Fira and stopped to get pictures every time we saw something amazing. So there were quite a few stops. Although, my favorite random sighting was a Mexican restaurant called Senor Zorba’s.
We made it back to Fira, dropped off the ATV’s, and wandered around more. Had a gyro for dinner. They are so cheap and so good. Found a few stores to wander
around in, including a drug store and a grocery store, so I was able to get some much needed necessities. And then I finished the night off with a vanilla apple cinnamon crepe from a place called the NRG Café that was much loved by many crewmembers. I tried to get some night shots of the Fira landscape, but finding a steady place for my camera with all the wind was not easy. I really need to remember to bring my mini-tripod with me when I go places. I’m suddenly finding great uses for it.
I got back to the ship around 9pm. All in all, it was a fantastic day and considering it was the one and only time I was able to get out and see Santorini on the contract, I think I saw quite a bit of it. It really is an amazing place. Anyone who has the chance to go there should.
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Holly
non-member comment
Wow!
Absolutely beautiful! Yes...so worth the wait. Thank you for posting.