Even after almost a whole day of laying around yesterday, I still slept soundly through the night and awoke at 8:15 this morning feeling much better than I had felt the night before. We were anchored already and I could see the town of Skala where our tenders would drop us off. The winding donkey path was easily visible from our veranda and the cable cars were tougher to see but we could make them out in the distance.
We packed our things to go ashore and had breakfast at the Oasis café where I avoided anything with milk or cream in it. After breakfast, we headed to the Celebrity Theater to pick up our tender tickets and, as last time, there was no wait and we immediately headed down to the deck 3 to exit the ship and board the tender. The tenders for this port were larger than the ones in Mykonos.
Once we arrived in Skala, we turned right and headed towards the donkey trail having already decided that we would climb the 600+ steps to the town of Fira. We walked by the donkeys who were all huddled together and we carefully spent the next 20 minutes or so sidestepping donkey puddles and piles as we made our way up the steps.
Occasionally, loose donkeys would make their way down and we hugged the walls to avoid being stepped on. We made good time on the steps stopping occasionally to catch our breaths, take pictures, or wait for donkeys to amble by. We actually made it to the top in better time than some of the donkeys who would stop midway up to eat or relieve themselves while their riders waited for them, unsure what to do when they came to a standstill. The donkey handlers were no help letting riders go with their donkeys up the steps unescorted.
The view at the top was beautiful and we looked back proudly having ascended some 900 feet amidst donkey stuff and strange donkey smells. We looked briefly in a few stores for a souvenir magnet and walked in what we assumed was the general direction towards the main street which is very difficult to tell with the narrow, winding walkways that are so common here in Greece.
We found our first street and walked down another alleyway where we were talked into renting an ATV for only 20 Euros. The woman at the desk of the Moto Kostas rental agency made a copy of my driver’s license and an imprint of my credit card for a deposit. The 20 Euros I had to pay in cash. After being given a map, selecting helmets and a brief rundown of how to work the ATV, we were on our way and immediately met our first challenge – turning right into traffic. The ATV reached about 40 km/hr on a straight road and only about 20 km/hr on a steep hill. Drivers who were in a hurry passed us including a few buses.
We headed towards Megalochori to the South of Fira stopping first at the Santos Winery along the way. The setting was breathtaking and after a few tour buses left, we approached the winery staff about sampling wine but, not being a part of a tour, we were told it would cost 1 Euro per tasting. We paid our 2 Euros and tried their table red and their Vinsanto (sweet) wines. The table red was ok – nothing to write home about but we both liked the Vinsanto and picked up a few small bottles of Vinsanto shaped like the island, a bottle of liqueur made from cinnamon and cloves, and some olive oil soap.
We stopped to take a picture of us on our ATVs then headed to Megalochori where we easily found the sign pointing towards the Boutari winery.
Here, again, a couple of tour groups kept the winery staff busy and when they finally all left, we were able to sample some wines. We had joked about disguising ourselves as tour groupies but we didn’t have the requisite numbered stickers so we waited until they all left. The down side to not being on a tour is that we did not get snacks with our wine tasting, had to wait, and had to pay for the wine tastings but the upside is that it was a heck of a lot less expensive to tour this way. While we waited, we walked around the winery for a bit noting the smell of “overripe” grapes and watched as some winery staff were scooping grapes into buckets. These were the grapes that had been drying in the sun for 10 days and would be used to make their sweet wines.
We paid 6.50 Euros to taste 6 wines (the medium tasting). The first white wine, simply named “Santorini” was very good and of the white wines that we tasted, was our favorite. Our second white wine was named “Selladio” and seemed drier and earthier than the first tasting. Next was the Kallisti Reserve – another white wine that were really didn’t care for. Our first red tasting was the Sec Rose which had a wonderful strawberry bouquet and would be wonderful with chocolate dipped strawberries. We tried a red table wine next and loved it. The staff member doing our pouring also mentioned that this was his favorite red wine as well. Lastly, we tried the Vinsanto dessert wine which was also very good. We purchased a case of wine to be shipped home: 2 bottles of the Santorini white, 2 of the red, 1 of the sec Rose, and 1 of the Vinsanto. We paid about 150 Euros total for all the wine and shipping.
Our next stop was in Kamari on the Southeast side of the island where we easily found the Koutsoyannopolous winery and museum that the woman working at the ATV rental store highly recommended.
For 6 Euros each, we did a self-guided tour of the museum which was informative and cute with animated figures and authentic equipment housed underground followed by a tasting of 3 wines. This was the best deal of the day.
We sampled a white wine, the Nichteri Koutsoyannopoulos which was very very mild as was the red wine, Abelones. The 3rd tasting, however, was a dessert wine, Kamaritis, that is not available for purchase outside of the winery. We loved this dessert wine and bought 2 bottles to bring home.
By this time, it was about 2:30 and we needed to think about lunch. It’s customary in much of Europe to eat both lunch and dinner very late. We headed towards Monolithos to the north after taking a brief unintended detour into the airport and found the Monolithos beach where we parked and walked a short distance to a taverna called Skaramagas. The taverna was pretty busy even at around 2:30 in the afternoon. We ordered Tzatziki, a Greek salad, and souvlaki which were all very good.
We spent 22 Euros on lunch then hopped on the ATV for our final ride back into Fira stopping off at a gas station to put a couple Euros worth of gas in the tank. We got a little lost trying to remember where to turn to get back to the rental agency and, thankfully, another couple on an ATV pulled up next to us and showed us the street that the rental agency was on. We drove the wrong way up a one-way street without getting killed (but did get some dirty looks) and returned the ATV in one piece before 4 pm.
We easily found the donkey path and, this time, made very good time getting down to Skala passing a lot of worn out passengers on the way and now feeling comfortable shoving the donkeys out of the way as we made our way down. At first, I was afraid of walking behind the donkeys and spooking them but it was very obvious that these donkeys were very used to activity around them. Each port day as we returned to the ship, Celebrity would have water and punch for us to drink as well as cold, wet towels to cool off with. We really looked forward to those cool towels and wiping the dust and sweat off our arms and neck.
We got back to the ship, dumped our stuff in our cabin, and then ran down to the Tastings Café to pick up a few snacks – I especially like their little chocolate meringue cookies. The pastries disappear at 5 pm every afternoon, though, so we just slipped in under the wire and snagged a few pastries. The crew member tending the pastries asked us if we had ridden the donkeys and it dawned on us that we must still have “Eau de Donkey” despite carefully wiping our shoes on the floor mat before getting back on the ship. When we returned to the cabin, I kicked my shoes off out on the veranda to let them “air out”. We really did enjoy walking up and down the donkey path and can now add it to our list of “brags” for this cruise although most everyone that we know would not have been caught dead doing that. I had a brilliant idea later for marketing a new item at the foot of those donkey steps: rubberized, disposable, slip-on shoe covers. What a hit those would be.
The shower I took had to be one that I looked most forward to on the entire cruise. I swear I caught a whiff of “Eau de Donkey” for most of the day that we were in Santorini. We met Wade, Charlie, Peter, and Joyce again outside the Cova Café for cocktails at 6 pm and shared stories and compared notes. I had another Flirtini. Charlie had slept in today and didn’t make it out to Santorini while Wade explored it on his own taking the cable cars to the top. Peter and Joyce had taken a Celebrity tour. When they left to go to early seating dinner, Seth and I went to look at the specials in the Galaxy shops and then went to the Celebrity Theater for Peter Fisher billed as a British virtuoso violinist at 7:15. Seth was a little reluctant to go but I insisted.
At 7:10, there were still fewer than a half dozen couples in the theater but the seats filled in pretty nicely in the last 5 minutes or so. I’ve never heard of Peter Fisher before but he really was fantastic. He played Paganini, Sarasate, Meditation from Thais, and even did The Devil Goes Down to Georgia as well as some jazz. For an encore, he played Oh Danny Boy which was just wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed his music and couldn’t help but wonder why he was playing on a cruise ship which seems almost beneath any classically trained violinist but I was glad to know that Celebrity really did provide high quality entertainment and not just cheesy lounge acts.
We decided to skip bingo tonight and wandered around for a little while looking in the art gallery, considered doing some gambling in the casino but then reconsidered, and found a place in the lounge to sit and people watch. At 8:50, we headed to the Orion restaurant for dinner and were soon joined by Steven and Elaine. We hadn’t eaten dinner at our table in 3 days and our sommelier, Oana, did give us a bit of a hard time in good humor. We ordered another bottle of wine at Oana’s encouragement – she even offered to let us use our other Captain’s Club wine coupon for $5 off without ordering another bottle. I just had to promise to bring the coupon with me to dinner tomorrow.
I’d been feeling much better since swearing off milk and dairy products the night before last. I got the tuna tartar, declined the avocado soup (cream based) and opted for the beef consommé instead, had the spring leaves with fried potatoes and onion, then the veal marsala which came highly recommended by Alexander who was particularly chatty tonight. I had to skip the bananas foster and got the chocolate meringue instead which was very sweet but very good. We chatted with Steven and Elaine again resuming our comparison of US vs England and shared with them our triumphant lunch the other day in Mykonos where we ran off without leaving a tip remembering our conversation about the tipping practices (or lack thereof) in England. We all got a good chuckle out of that. At 10:45, we said good night to our table mates and called it a night. When we arrived back in our cabin, an invitation was sitting on our bed for the Captain’s table tomorrow night. Joyce had somehow arranged for the 6 of us to have dinner on our last formal night at the captain’s table.
No comments:
Post a Comment