Day 6 (Friday, May 19, 2023) - Santorini, Greece, Celebrity Beyond 12 night Mediterranean Cruise

 Day 6 – Santorini, Greece (May 19, 2023)

We would be tendering into Santorini this morning but I had underestimated how much time it would take for us to find our tour guide. After breakfast at Luminae (I had to send my breakfast back because the hash browns were burnt and my “over medium” eggs were way to runny for me – kudos to the waiter who saw that I hadn’t really eaten my breakfast for asking me if something was wrong), we actually got to the base of the cable car about 15 minutes before our scheduled meeting time of 9 am but it was unclear where we were supposed to meet our guide. The itinerary from Kensington simply said “cable car entrance”. I had to call Kensington and found out that we were supposed to meet at the top of the cable car – not the bottom.

Unfortunately, there were 4 cruise ships in port this day and the area we were dropped off from the tender was extremely congested. We got in a line for the cable car but it was super long so we decided to walk up the donkey path. We had taken this path 15 years ago and not much had changed – the donkeys, their odor and poop along the way. It had been 15 years and it was definitely a harder climb this time around – over 550 steps. Near the top, the steps split off towards the cable car or to city center so I assumed our guide would be at the cable car and took the left path which led to even more steps. It took about 40 minutes to make that climb and I finally found Constantina (“Tina)” waiting for us at the top. Seth and Tim had stopped to help an older gentleman who had fallen while trying to climb the donkey path. Fortunately, Tina was very understanding and walked us slowly to our driver and car as we cooled off and caught our breaths.

Our tour took us to all parts of Santorini – north, middle, and south parts of the island. The blue water, blue skies, white and blue buildings – it was just as we had remembered - so gorgeous. We toured Fira for a bit. The walk was so rough – uneven, narrow cobblestone paths and a ton of tourists. When Seth and I had visited Santorini in the past, we explored on our own – renting a 4-wheeler and driving all around the island visiting different wineries.

A word about eating on a tour in the Mediterranean. I don’t know if this was a Kensington thing (the tour company we had used in the UK who did an excellent job so we decided to use them again) but sometimes our tours would be 6 hours long starting in the morning and ending in the afternoon with no meal scheduled or even a quick cafe stop for a bite to eat. I found this extremely annoying as we’re used to eating breakfast at 8 am or so, have lunch around noon, and then usually had dinner plans around 6 pm. I had asked Tina to make sure we were able to stop somewhere to grab a bite to eat before continuing on our tour – and well before 2 or 3 pm. We stepped into a small cafe in Fira and had shared a sandwich, water, and some baklava which was a super light lunch.

Once we cleared Fira, we went out to Megalochori – one of Tina’s favorite towns. She showed us the grape vines and talked about how the vines were trained in a circle closely hugging the ground due to the constant winds and lack of rain fall on the island. We visited Akrotiri where Tina handed us off to another guide who was super knowledgeable about the ruins and walked us through the site pointing out the floors – 4 floors in some areas. They had recovered some pots, frescos, and even a toilet system. One thing I didn’t know is that you can tell from the shape of a pot (some of these were 3 and 4 feet tall) if it was used to store olive oil. Our guide told us that pots with a tapered bottom was more likely to be used to store olive oil to keep it “fresher”.

After our Akrotiri tour, we went for a wine tasting at the smallest winery on Santorini – Art Space which was a winery combined with an art gallery. I was so excited to try some vinsanto – one of our favorite sweet wines from our first trip to Santorini – we had toured the Santos winery 15 year earlier. We toured the caves of the winery and then tasted about half the wines and selected a few bottles to be shipped home. We also fell in love with a bronze statue of a wind blown olive tree made by Panagiotides Angelos who has a permanent exhibit in Athens from the 2004 Olympic Games in Greece. We decided to buy it and had it shipped home as well.

Tina dropped us off near the cable car but the line was down the street, circled the square, and turned the corner down another street so Tina suggested we have a coffee and hang out for a bit before trying to get on the cable car. We wandered around a bit and ended up at Zafora, the restaurant right next to the cable car entrance and had a bite to eat since we had a such a light lunch, had time to kill, and were hungry. The buy who seated us took us to our table, literally threw down 3 menus on the table and walked off. We totally cracked up – it was so funny. We ordered the fried saganaki and also the shrimp saganaki which is what Tina and the lady at the winery had recommended. Tim went ahead and tried to take the cable car to get back to the ship, and I gave him the 6 Euro fare but he ended up taking the donkey path back down again which is what we ended up doing about 30 minutes later.

When we got back to the ship, a shower felt great but it was so late (after 7 pm) that we decided to try the Pizza station. We each tried a few slices, took it upstairs to the Sunset Bar but we were very disappointed with the pizza – the sauce was bland and I didn’t particularly care for the toppings – even I felt like it needed some salt or something. We ordered a drink from the sunset bar and then later tried the Oceanside Cafe but, again, we were very disappointed. I wanted some rice or noodles and ended up trying the fried noodles from the Asian station (burnt) and the rice with some chicken tikka masala (dry). We were definitely not going to do that ever again.

Next post:  Day7 - Saturday, 5/20/23 - Mykonos