Med Cruise Day 3: Santorini

Arriving at Santorini, with Oia in the background

After a day at sea, day three saw us arriving in late morning into the Cycladean island of Santorini. Much loved by many, it's famous for the fabulous sunsets, and the donkey track from the dock to the capital Thira (aka Thera and Fira). The ship cannot dock so we anchored in the main caldera this volcanic island.

These days there's an alternate dock and we tendered to that before boarding a bus for our supposed three hour self guided excursion to Oia with is blue church domes and clifftop views. 

The roughly hour long bus trip saw us pass through Thira and take a circuitous rout to Oia on this parches island. It has no drinkable water of it's own, so all water has to be brought in.

Arriving at Oia was chaos. The bus park is small, there are loads of buses, cars, moped, quad bikes and millions of people. Our guide then announced we'd get one hour and twenty minutes before the bus departed, so way short of the time we'd expected. Eventally we found our way into the town with it's narrow streets and white painted houses. The throngs of people made it quite uncomfortable at times, and it's clearly a place for the Instagrammers. Selfie sticks and people brushing their hair and putting make up on for that 'gram phot were in abundance. It was also very hot. We wandered around for forty minutes or so before making our way back to the bus. It was a fabulous place to see, and tick the box, but I'd hate to go on holiday there. It's far too crowded and by all accounts, very expensive.

The caldera from Oia. Our ship is front centre

Oia (with crowds cropped out!)

We made our way back to Thira, where the bus dropped us off. Thira was quite than Oia, but in my opinion almost as lovely, with plenty of shops, hotels a, bars and restaurants. By now we just wanted to get back on board.

There were three options :

1. Get a donkey
2. Walk down the 600 or so steps of the donkey track, avoiding the donkey poo
3. Catch a 3 minute cable car

Although one of our party is terrified of heights generally and cable cars in particular, she braved the cable car option as we had a free ticket. It was a smooth ride and we caught our tender at the bottom back to the ship.

View of the donkey path from the cable car, about half way down

Once back we chilled out on the pool deck before the now standard sumptuous evening dinner in our favourite restaurant supplemented by a few glasses of wine/cocktails followed by more cocktails. 

Our itinerary had been changed a few months earlier to allow a later departure from Santorini to "amplify the guest experience". I think they meant so that we could see the sunset. To be fair, it was spectacular.

Santorini Sunset

So that was day three done, and we were now headed for an overnight sailing to Rhodes.

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