Thursday, September 22nd - Santorini, Greece
Up at the crack of dawn; here's what we saw from our balcony:
Quickly to the Constellation Theater to get our tender ticket for the mini-sea voyage to Santorini. The local Boatmen's Union has the contract to take cruise ship passengers ashore (rather than letting the ships use their own tenders) so we were at the mercy of when the shuttle would come. Turns out five cruise ships (most bigger than ours) are in the Santorini harbor this morning -- so we got a bit of a late start.
But we were ashore in short order and met our tour guide for today, Margarita. Much like Vicki in Athens, Margarita kept up a continuous stream of information as we took Bus #3 around the island.
Santorini is really five islands surrounding a volcanic caldera (look it up) and the one that the cruise ships visit (as well as everyone else) is Thera. Thera contains several villages; our six hour tour took us to Fira and Oia which are likely the most photographed cities of any size in the world.
We'd seen photos of Santorini where everywhere you look is a postcard shot. Whitewashed houses and blue domed churches. What I didn't know is that "Santorini" translates in English to: "walking and climbing your butt off on uneven surfaces". I understand that, now.
The bus drove us through Fira, the capital of the island, but we didn't stop; we'll be back here later today.
Here are photos from our first stop, very high near a monastery that is closed to the public:
Above, SWMBO with Kathy and Tom Cooper
Apparently the "sacred dog syndrome" apples in Santorini as well as in Athens..
On the bus for Oia (pronounced: "ee-ya") for a lunch sampling local specialties. We dined in a restaurant called "Pyrgos"..
..and the food was very good. On the other hand, the wine provided -- was not. Not at all!
Above, Kathy and Tom agreed about the food -- and the wine..
Back on the bus and back to Fira where we walked and walked and walked and... you get the idea. Admittedly great photo ops but you gotta work for 'em. We shopped; well, Gael shopped and I tagged along.
If you think the highest point in Fira isn't high, below is a 300MM telephoto shot of our ship in the harbor:
What a surprise! The only way to the cable-car station is through -- a shopping area! 
There were three ways to get from Fira (quite a high elevation) back down to the quay where the shuttles back to the ship could be found. You could walk down, ride a donkey down, or take the funicular (cable-car) down. We were told that you can walk down in a half-hour (avoiding donkey poop as you go), ride a donkey down in fifteen minutes (they don't worry so much about stepping in donkey poop), or take the cable-car down in two minutes.
It seemed the cable-car was the obvious choice, though Gael wanted to walk; I talked her out of it. Here's what we didn't know: Because of all the tourists in town from five different cruise ships, the queue for the cable-car was fifty minutes long -- and the sun was pretty hot. But we survived.
Because we know all cruising tourists are idiots, they'd carefuly marked the way to the cable-car station:
Here's Gael (can you find her? I couldn't..) forty minutes into the climbing queue to the cable-car station:
..and fifty minutes in:
Finally, here comes the cable-car:
This is our view from the cable-car a few hundred feet on our way; one of those "picture postcard" shots:
At the dockside cable-car station, it would have been nice if there was a sign that said something like: "Regent Seven Seas to the left". When we guessed "right", walked for a while until we ran out of road, it was then clear that "left" was the correct choice.
Standing-room only on the shuttle boat but we were back aboard Voyager by 4:30p where I finished the writeup on Ephesus from yesterday and this blog for today. All caught up! Yay!
Dinner tonight alone and then early to bed. 8:30a tour of Monemvasia (another six hour tour; hope the walking is more humane..)
More later!
Click  for yesterday or  for tomorrow..
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