Greece Is The Word - Day 4

Day 4 - Sunday, October 16

Crete and Santorini

On Sunday we woke up really early and had a 6:30 breakfast at the buffet so we could get off the ship right at 7 when we docked in Heraklion, Crete. Our original plan for Crete had been to go to the Palace of Knossos, one of the great archaeological sites of the world. However, because of the strikes, all archaeological sites in all or Greece were closed on Sunday. So, we thought maybe the Archaeological museum would still be open, but, no dice. So, we spent our morning walking around the streets of Heraklion and enjoying the local flavor. We visited the Church of Ayios Titos where they were having Sunday morning mass, then continued exploring Heraklion. As some very ominous-looking clouds started to descend upon the city, we walked toward the water and plopped ourselves in a little cafe to wait out the rain storm. It actually ended up being really nice to just sit and watch the rain over the Mediterranean and the Venetian Fortress of Rocca al Mare and drink white hot chocolate. With a break in the weather we headed back to the ship and had a nice lunch while we sailed to Santorini.

During lunch we had gotten tender tickets for Santorini, and were on the first tender to leave the ship. Even from the decks of the ship, we could tell that Santorini is an amazingly beautiful island. Santorini is the remnants of a much larger island that was destroyed during one of the largest volcanic eruptions in history, the Thera eruption, which occurred 3600 years ago. When we docked in Thera we had to decide whether we were going to ascend the large cliffside via the cable car, via donkey, or via foot. We chose the cable car, which I think was a very good choice. When we reached the top we were rewarded with absolutely incredible views of the city sitting on the cliffside. We meandered through the streets of Thera and decided to get in a cab and head over to the city of Oia. Oia is only about 6 miles north of Thera, and is the home of the traditional whitewashed buildings and blue domes that are so iconic in Santorini. The cab dropped us off in Oia, and we meandered through the rain to the main church. From there we walked down some narrow alleyways, and were rewarded with the view that we had all be picturing in our minds. Looking out over the east side of the island we were able to see the city, with all its blue domes, the cliffs, and the water. The scene was absolutely breathtaking. After taking some pictures and trying not to get too wet from the rain we headed back to the center of the town where we met our cab to go back to Thera. We had enough time to explore the streets of Thera before the sun went down, and we explored some of the shopping areas where Arielle bought some beautiful jewelry and Jeremy and I bought a painting of the scenes of Santorini. We picked a little restaurant with an extremely interesting owner (who basically forced us to come and eat in his restaurant), and tasted the traditional sweet and dry white wines from Santorini with some delicious baklava and banana caramel crepes. We were a little disappointed that we didn't have a sunset because of the weather, but the view was still fantastic, the food and wine were delicious, and the company was great. From there we walked up to the cable car, and in the dark I ended up with some donkey poop on my shoes. Oh well. We finally reached the top and got on the cable car to head back down to the port. We tendered back to the ship and had a great last dinner with our waiter Geny. After dinner we had high hopes of going to the ship's magic show, but we were so tired that we went to our rooms and played some games before going to sleep.