Holland America Line Nieuw Amsterdam Cruise: Day 6 Santorini, Greece
Viv & Jill’s Holland America Line Nieuw Amsterdam Cruise: Day 6 Santorini, Greece
12-Night Mediterranean Romance Cruise June 3-15, 2011
Thira (Santorini), Greece
Day 6 – June 8: Santorini, Greece
Santorini was the port we were both the most excited to explore on this entire cruise. I had wanted to visit this island which boasts a population of 12,000 for the last 20+ years, and finally the dream was becoming a reality. Again, we were doing our own excursion and armed with the information that Travel Guide Tom had imparted the previous afternoon, felt comfortable in our decision to get our tender tickets as early as possible and hopefully beat the crowds (or at least most of them) for the tram ride (4 euro each way) up to Thira.
By 9:40 am we were in a tender and cruised the 10-minute ride over to the dock at the base of the village. As we approached, we realized that our hopes of beating the crowds to the funicular were not to be realized, and as we have no patience for queues (and it looked like a good hour+ wait) it was on to plan B and a donkey ride to the top. But, no. Plan B wasn’t going to work either. The queue for the donkey rides had hundreds of people already waiting too. So, plan C (our final option) was to be the game of the day – walking the 580+ steps from the bottom of the caldera cliffs to the top of the 28 sq mile volcanic island (about 980 ft above the caldera).
Dodging donkeys, mules and their poop turned into an exciting part of the 24-minute hike up the path (keep in mind that unless you’re pretty fit, you may want to choose another option), including numerous times when we felt we were targets as they ran mindlessly back down the path after depositing their riders at the top.
The Donkey Path on Santorini
As soon as we arrived in Thira we asked a local shopkeeper the direction to the bus station (there’s only 1) and got in line for the bus ride across the island to Oia – famous for its blue-domed churches. Within 10-minutes we were packed like sardines onto the bus and bouncing our way with all the other like-minded tourists on the 30-minute ride to Oia (1.45 euro each way).
Arriving in Oia by 11 am we were blown away with the quaintness of the picturesque village, the whitewashed buildings carved into the volcanic cliffs and even the endless souvenir, jewelry and clothing shops that would keep all the shopping tourists occupied. After wandering around taking endless photos for an hour, we found a small taverna with rooftop dining affording a fabulous view of the caldera and the 6 cruise ships that were visiting the island that day. We settled in for a relaxing lunch of ice coffee, Santorini white wine, a dish of baked Greek cheese with tomatoes, pureed eggplant and a basket of bread – heaven!
After taking in the amazing scenery from our vantage point for over an hour, it was time to continue our exploration of Oia before catching the bus back to Thira. But, before we did we spied a small shop selling local beer and of course had to sample it – and were glad we did.
Back in Thira, we now took time to wander the narrow alleys with even more shops and tourists than what we encountered in Oia and soon decided that it was time to start making our way back to the ship. Again, there was a huge queue for the funicular and we were not feeling brave enough to ride one of those crazy donkeys down the path (we’d seen them tripping and banging their riders into the cliff walls as we traipsed upwards in the morning), so we started the downward walk (18-minutes) back to the harbor and awaiting tender.
Arriving back on Nieuw Amsterdam in late afternoon we went straight to our cabin and called room service and ordered up the smoked salmon plates and ice tea. It arrived within 25 minutes and we thoroughly enjoyed our snack while we washed off the day’s dirt (it was a very sweaty job going up and down that donkey trail). We had arrived back on board a good hour before the last tender which was slated for 5:30 pm and were ready to go up to the pool deck to get our final glimpse of Santorini as we sailed away just before 6 pm.
As we had an invitation to attend a Frequent Cruiser cocktail party in the Crow’s Nest Lounge with Captain van Zaane and Hotel Manager Stan Kuppens we didn’t make it to dinner in the Manhattan Dining Room until almost 8:30 pm. We were asked if we would like our own table or to be seated with other passengers and tonight we decided to meet some new people. It turned out that we joined a mother/daughter duo from Georgia, USA and a husband/wife couple from Ontario, Canada. Mom, Marvel, and her daughter, Linda Garrison (who is the cruise travel writer for About.com), were having as much fun on this cruise as we were. Canadians Tim and Kathy were thrilled to be seated with such a knowledgeable cruise and travel bunch and picked all of our brains on all things travel. It was a fun dinner and we all agreed that it would be nice to do it again soon.
The entertainment in The Showroom at Sea was comedienne/singer, Siobhan Phillips, from England and she was not only very funny, but had a terrific voice and great range of material – another superlative show. After such a full day of sightseeing and entertaining conversation with new friends, we were exhausted in a good way and finally called in a night around 1 am.
Santorini, Greece
Explore More of WJ’s Holland America Line Mediterranean Romance Cruise
Overview | Itinerary | Photos | Day 1: Venice, Italy | Day 2: Venice, Italy | Day 3: Dubrovnik, Croatia | Day 4: Corfu, Greece | Day 5: Argostoli, Greece | Day 6: Santorini, Greece | Day 7: Sea Day | Day 8: Catania, Italy | Day 9: Naples, Italy | Day 10: Rome, Italy | Day 11: Livorno, Italy | Day 12: Barcelona | Day 13: Barcelona Disembarkation |
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