Santorini, Greece

Santorini, Greece (Stop #5 on the Cruise):

I am so excited to tell you all about Santorini, because this was my second favorite stop on the cruise.  Despite the fact that there was no sun out and I only had 2 hours to make my way around Santorini, it was so beautiful that it didn't matter and you are about see why!

We had to take a smaller boat from the cruise ship to the shore.  These are the cliffside houses in blue and yellow, but as you are about to see, the city is whitewashed.  It's so pretty!

There's our ship, the Costa Magica, Italian cruiseline.  And yes it's sister ship crashed the year before, it's okay we are fine.

So obviously we had to get from the bottom of the cliff to the town above.  There were three ways to get to the top.  1) Cable car 2) Walking up the path 3) Donkey.  I wasn't about to get on a donkey and I wasn't about to hike up that cliff in flip flops which seemed to me a 90 degree angle.  So we took the cable cars which was a scary experience in itself.

So this is what I saw at the top.  The tourist area of town looked pretty neat and like I said all the buildings were white.  I wondered if they had to paint them all the time and I actually did see someone with a paint roller that had answered my question.  But with Costa's ridiculous schedule of only allowing us 2-3 hours on port and the time it took to wait to get off the ship and get on a boat and go ashore then get to the top of the cliff, we only had time to panic. 

But seriously, I wanted to do a beach day before we finished our cruise and we are in Greece after all.  So we hailed a 20 minitue cab ride to Perissa Beach.  With the beautiful black sands and multicolored rocks, it was like no beach that I had ever seen.  But it wasn't "beach weather"  boooo!  So no one was on the beach or in the water.  We decided to lay out for about 15 minutes, just to pretend. 

The black sands are from the town Volcano which had last erupted in the 50's.  There were also volcano hiking tours that you can take.  We actually signed up for that but Costa cancelled it due to "lack of interest."  But really with the crazy schedule, there was not time.

Then we decided, what the hell, let's eat some Greek food! 

Some Greek coffee.

On the cab ride down, we had asked the driver what good foods Santorini was known for.  He said to try the local tomatoes.  I ordered tzatziki with tomatoes and cucumbers and pita bread.  Let me tell you, those were the best tomatoes I've ever had.  And I am picky about them if they are too soggy.  Don't let the modest spread fool you, I also had stuffed tomatoes and peppers and Brandon had a meat dish of course.  And he tried some of the Greek beer, Mythos!  Everything was so good!

So after enjoying our meal, we realized we needed to get back to the ship or we would miss it!  From here on is where the panic ensued.  We got another cab ride back and isn't the scenery gorgeous?

After we made it back to the port of Fira, we ran through the town to get to the cable cars.  No way, we were getting on those, the line had like a hundred people in it.   Don't they know we have a ship to board?  Our only other options were of course hopping on a smelly donkey or hauling ass down that cliff.  So we hauled ass down that cliff.  I really didn't want to to get kicked or bitten.  We had 20 minutes to make it to the last tender so we had to run. 

This is what we saw as we were literally running down the cliff.  We had to dodge crazy donkeys, their  poop, and their owners asking us to "take a donkey ride."   "No thanks mister, we don't have time!" 

Running down this cliff in panic mode was the funniest part of our trip.  What's this guy doing with his hind legs?

We made it to the bottom.  But it wasn't all in vain.  We made our tender, I got a leg workout like you wouldn't believe, and I shot this great picture on the way down:

So if you have more time in Santorini, I'd suggest that you go to the village of Oia, where you can see the pretty whitewashed village.  It looks like this: 

Favorite thing about Santorini:

Hands down are the views of the whitewashed cliffside villages.

Next Stop:  Corfu, Greece

Would you rather visit more places on a cruise with less time ashore or visit less places with more time ashore?

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