Santorini, Greece

Our next stop was the beautiful island of Santorini.  Santorini is the largest island of a circular archipelago surrounding a volcano.  Given the time of year, we were the only cruise ship at the island and there weren't many other tourists around.  The only downside was it was a bit overcast the day we were there, but we still had a great time.

All of the cruise ships must anchor off the island, with small barges transporting everyone to the island.  It took about 10-15 minutes to get to the main port for offloading in a southern port of Athinios.

Once on the island, we took a bus us to Oia, which is one of the most photographed towns in all of Greece.

 

The iconic white and blue buildings are actually due to a former Greek dictators edict.  We didn't have a ton of sunshine, but the views were still great.

 Once we had explored Oia, we decided to break off from our tour group, and hike back on a nice ocean-side trail from Oia to Fira.  The trail can be a bit steep at time, but I would highly recommend the walk.  You'll have some great views of both sides of the island as well as the ocean and nearby islands.  We had trouble finding the exact entrance, so we basically started walking in one direction with the ocean on our right-hand side until we ran into it.

 

The island has three different types of sands, with certain beaches consistently entirely of red, black, and white sands.  We didn't visit the beaches but did see lots of different sand and rocks on our walk.

For the most part, the trail is easy to follow, although we did go down a few dead ends at times.  However, it is always easy to know the general direction you should be going given the small size of the island.

It was a bit windy and slightly wet at times walking, but we had a great time on the hike, with no one else present on the trail.  I would say the hiking is moderate, with lots of steps along the way, although it isn't particularly treacherous and shouldn't be overly strenuous if you take your time.

The hike will take you buy Skaros Rock. You can take an offshoot from the trail to climb this butte-like land mass, which was formerly the site of a castle until being destroyed in the 19th century.  We didn't explore this separately due to time concerns.

After about 2-3 hours, we made it down to the outskirts of Fira.  Walking through the town, you may even see some olive presses like the one below.

 Fira has plenty of places to shop if you desire, with a wide range of products.

To get down to the docks to travel back to the ship, you can take a long series of wide stairs, take a donkey ride down/up, or take the rail-care.  The donkey ride was discouraged for our passengers due to concerns for falls as well as odors.  Everyone was given a rail pass, so we ended up using this to travel back to the dock.  You'll get some great views coming down.

 

 

 

We were then ferried back to the boat on local ships.  Our ship left Santorini at 3:00 PM local time, with our next and final destination being Athens, Greece.