Day 9 September 17 - Santorini Greece

 Today we are in Santorini, Greece - apparently the home of the super rich. We were told by one tour guide earlier this week that if you want a drink in one area of Santorini with an umbrella in it you will have to take out a mortgage.

We have an excursion planned for tomorrow where get to drink some Santorini wine and taste some food. Thank God it is paid for up front.

We had an early morning meeting at 7:45 to get ready to go ashore. Today we had to get in a smaller boat for a 10 minute ride to our bus which took us on our cruise. If we had to rank the ports of call in Greece this would be number 5 for us I think. Not sure why but perhaps because we didn't have a great tour guide.

We visited the towns of Fira and Oia . We seemed to be restricted with time and didn't get to enjoy what the island has to offer. We did go to a winery at 9:30 am to take some Santorini wine. There was white, red and rose to taste but early for us. It was ok but nothing spectacular. After that we went to visit a couple of market areas in the other 2 towns we visited. The markets were very busy as you can see from the photographs and the people go all out to impress people to visiting their restaurants. The people here live close together in the small towns and in some areas live in single dwellings.

There are only about 15,500 inhabitants but they have a bout 2 million visitors a year so it has become totally dependent on tourists as you can see from some of the photos below. One of the photos shows the number of busses waiting for tourists - over 30 - who are doing excursions.

You have to ride a very winding road in a bus to get from the small boat terminal to town which is very scary if you are afraid of heights. However, you could come back on a lift which is an experience but there is a couple of hour waiting line in the hot weather so we passed on it and took the bus.

It's been a bit of a pain to post some photos today with the connections. We just finished a lovely dinner with a salad, grilled New York sirloin followed by a Sacher torte - chocolate cake with some trimmings - all delicious! Sorry. :-)

We went to the top deck to get a sundown shot but was a few minutes too late. Did get one or two. Enjoy! 

We are off to a show soon and then tomorrow it's a day at sea followed by Malta on Tuesday. All is going well but it is going by fairly fast. We do gain an hour tonight as the clocks go back. Cheers to all!

Santorini from the boat this morning.

Our boat from atop Santorini - we are second from the left.

Panoramic view from the winery.

Early morning wine tasting - don't recommend it. lol

Narrow street in shopping are of Oia.

Another narrow street.

Gladys with Oia in the background.

Another shot of the layout of the town.

One of the walkways to the homes.

Just another view of the area.

Crowded shopping area.

Shopping area again.

Round houses of Santorini.

Shot of all the buses waiting in the parking lot for tourists. I counted 35 - probably more.

Shopping centre.

This is in the shopping area too.

Houses are on top of one another.

Looking out from the shopping plaza.

Both sides are lined with stores. Hard to shop for sure.

Gladys as the sunsets on Santorini on a windy evening.

Notice the rock formations from a volcano eruption many years ago.

Very interesting here. You can go up or down to Santorini from this location. On the left from the white building you can take a cable car to the top  or you can walk following the curved path. There are over 500 steps and that walkway is used by donkeys who carry people and goods. Some people did walk it today. You can go up or down. Our tour took us to a different location on sure and the lineup for the cable car was 2.5 hours so we came back on bus.