Day 7 Oct 17-Santorini

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I think if someone forced me to choose which island I would go back to of the three we visited, I would say Santorini. It was beautiful. I loved the way the buildings were built up the side and into the side of the cliffs. We took a ship's bus tour, so we got to see a little bit of the island besides Fira and Oia. The tour started with a tender ride to where we met our guide and a bus to take us to our sights. The bus climbed up a road with quite a few switchbacks that I don't think was built for buses. We drove through Fira and on to Oia. We had an hour to visit Oia. Our guide had us climb up to the main street so we knew where to come back to when we needed to find the bus.

Oia was the Greek island you see in photos, white buildings overlooking an amazing blue ocean. We passed a school where the kids were outside for recess and it brought me back to the reality that people actually live in this beautiful town. My first order of business was to find a bathroom. The line for the public facilities would have taken the entire hour, so I stopped into a restaurant. JoAnne took a seat intending to order an iced tea to make my visit to their establishment an honest one. But by the time I came out, she hadn't even been given a menu, so we left. Rick had, of course, taken off on his own again. We took lots of photos and I purchased a painting of the island (from a store that had thousands of them it seemed, as did most of the stores, so I suspect it was hand painted in some third world sweatshop). We also stopped at a pastry shop and bought some delicious baklava. Which made us late back to the bus. Rick was already there.

On the bus we drove to the other side of the island and saw the same kind of white buildings, but another color showed up. Yellow. The guide explained the white and blue as country pride, the colors of the flag. She also explained the yellow as being a natural color that was used before the white. We saw tiny fishing villages, empty areas that have been converted to resorts and many of the hundreds of chapels on the island. The guide said there is a church or chapel for every 10 people on the island, or something like that. Many are private family chapels and open just once a year to honor the saint it was named after. And everyone gets invited. So there are parties all the time on the island.

After the drive we went to one of the local wineries, Santos. They served a white, a red and a dessert wine. I didn't really like any of them, but the dessert wine was tolerable. Rick liked it so we bought a bottle for ourselves and a mini bottle for Stephen. After taking a few photos we made a point of not being the last ones on the bus. Somehow Rick had abandoned JoAnne and I again and we caught up with him on the bus.

We then made our way back around to Fira and the end of the bus tour. I have to say the guide was one of the worst we encountered in a while. She told us very little in the three or four hours we were with her and the little she did say she repeated three or four times. So we tipped the minimum and followed her up a hill to hear her final talk on where we were and how to find the donkey path or tram back down to catch the tenders to the ship.

Our first stop in Fira was at the Cathedral. We have a Greek church near where we live where we go to the Greek food festival each year and I wanted to see if they were the same inside. They basically were, but the one at home is darker and a bit more ornate. We walked along in Fira and turned away from the ocean to find a place to eat. We had a light lunch of fried local eggplant, an order of dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) and some Greek coffee. It was delicious. After lunch we headed back to the main street to find the way to the gondola. Rick decided to walk down the donkey trail and leave the gondola queue to us girls. I begged him not to because I didn't want the cabin to smell like donkey for the rest of the trip, but he promised not to get too close and to wash his shoes when he got back. JoAnne and I ended up in quite a long line, but it moved along and we had a nice chat with a group of people who were on the NCL Jade on vacation. They were from Canada and had enjoyed their trip. This was one of their final stops. Some people were even more stressed on vacation than I was and while we were in line a fight broke out because someone cut in line to be with some friends and the person behind them yelled at them to go to the end of the line. Well the yelling escalated and they threatened to hit each other, but fortunately the people who cut the line decided to go to the back of the line after all. A lot of people tried to intervene and tell the guy to relax we are on vacation, but he wasn't going to hear it. I felt bad for the woman who was with him. After an hour we made our way to the gondola and headed down to the tender area. The line there was shorter because we headed down early and most of the people in line were from the Jade, who were leaving before us. There were a few shops there, but all sold the same stuff we had already seen, so we just boarded the tender and headed back to the Galaxy.

Rick had made it back well before us. Lucky for him (and us) the day had been warm and the donkey trail fairly dry. It was not very busy since it was the end of the season, therefor it was an easy walk down. He still washed off his shoes, just in case.

Back on board, the first thing we did was grab our suits and head to the T-pool at the spa. After an hour or so there, we went up on deck to enjoy the warm sun to dry off and read a book. It was nice to have time to relax a bit before dinner. On the way to dinner we stopped out on deck to take some photos of the sunset.

Dinner choices tonight were not great. Rick ordered the shrimp linguine, even after the night before the seafood linguine was awful. When he tasted it, he sent it back. We decided we just didn't like the way they did seafood on this ship. We all ended up with really nice pork chops with garlic mashed potatoes and clove spiced red cabbage. I didn't even write down what we had for appetizers or dessert, so they must not have been worth remembering.

After dinner, we decided to give the show a try. It was a woman who sang with a big band in her day. We went in to check it out and left after the first song. Just not my style and JoAnne and Rick agreed. We went and looked at photos, then headed back to the cabin to get set for the next day. They were making a rare announcement where we found out that we would be tendering in Istanbul. Odd, but we could handle it. I was not ready for bed yet, but JoAnne and Rick were tired. So I left them to go to sleep and went to check out the sock hop show at the savoy lounge. I got there just as the band ended its first set and Stewart was starting a trivia contest. The idea was the dj play a part of a song and we were supposed to guess the song and the singer. But it didn't work that way because the audience started to sing along with all the songs and the answers were in the lyrics. I suspect it was planned that it would happen because to settle the score, each half of the room had to show up the other side. And the songs were no longer typical sock hop songs. So, each side had everyone participating in "YMCA." When it came to "hot hot hot" there was a huge conga line. For "NY NY" everyone in the place lined up to kick Rockettes style. It was a lot of fun, but once that was over and the band started up again I decided it was time for me to call it a night.

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Photos

Fira on top of the cliff
On the tender to Santorini

Rick in Oia
Taken by a stranger because he had left JoAnne and me to take in the sights on our own.

A door to nowhere
At least it looks that way, actually it opens to a stairway that leads to a restaurant or hotel. There were a lot of these in Oia and Fira

One of the hundreds of chapels on Santorini
as seen on the bus ride on the less populated side of the island.