Wednesday, May 24
We woke up to find ourselves on a ship in the middle of volcanic crater. This is a huge, ancient undersea volcano, which is still sputtering away in the middle, an island with hot springs. The rim of the crater pokes out above the water, forming narrow, curved islands, including our destination, Santorini. We could see it in the distance. Is that snow on top? No, it’s the traditional whitewashed buildings clustered on the edge of the caldera.
So the challenge is to get up that cliff from the port to the city on top. The choices are ride a donkey, walk with the donkeys, or wait in line up to 2 hours for the cable car. We chickened out and got a ship’s tour to take us to a different port where a bus would pick us up. We zig-zagged up the inside of the volcano, visited a charming wine village, and went to Oia, the site of many a poster—whitewashed buildings and blue domes on a cliff above the ocean. Yeah, you’ve seen the poster. Too bad there were several large cruise ships in port today, so tourists were lined up to take the same picture. We went back to Fira, the capital of the island, and had a lovely lunch looking down into the caldera. We took the cable car back down to the ship and watched the famous sunset on the cliffs and white buildings from the comfort of the ship.