Santorini, Greece -Cruise part 3

Not that the entire trip wasn't just amazing, but I have to say, my hands down favorite port was the island of Santorini, Greece. When we woke up the boat was in the middle of the caldera of an ancient volcano that exploded thousands of years ago and the islands inhabitants basically live on the upper ring of what's left of the rim. It was breathtaking. Once we took the tender to shore we had to choose one of three way to get up to where the actual city of Fira was. 1. By cable car 2. walk (about 45 minutes up) 3. By Donkey. We chose to take the cable car. Actually, coming back down Kelcie, Jill & Bopy took the mules down but the night before our Matri'D had warned us that if you took it up you would smell of donkey the whole day, so it was better to just ride it down and come back to the ship and shower. Wise, wise man.

This was also the first port where Russ had aranged a private tour. Our guide met us at the top of the cable car and we took a walking tour of the main city. We stopped for some refreshments (shaved ice, drinks, ect---by the way when I ordered a watermelon shaved ice, it was literally watermelon puree, not the artificial kind of flavoring...) and headed to our small bus that took us all over the island. We went to the other 'big' town called Oia. It was on the other end of the island and when we were traveling there we got to this point where the island is so narrow you can see the ocean on both sides of you. We drove back to another area on the back of the island to eat lunch on a black sand beach. The 'sand' was more like smallish smooth stones, but once you got into the water you could find granulated sand.

Lunch was great. The view was amazing, unless you looked directly at the semi nude sunbathers. Tell me this, why is it that those who should not be topless are always the ones you catch a glimpse of??? Moving on...They had fresh seafood. Of course, I hate seafood, so I got an awesome salad. Luckily they have enough American tourists that we were able to get the boys chicken nuggets-however, when they came out, Braden refused to eat them, because "they don't look like Wendy's." Kelcie ordered the friend calamari, and was more than a little shocked when a full sized fried squid was brought out to her! Luckily, Bopy switched her plates so she didn't starve. After lunch we did some more sight seeing. Our guide took us to a ton of great lookout points. She showed us where they filmed scenes from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (1 &2) as well as a scnene from Lara Croft Tomb Raider. I can't begin to tell you the beauty of this isalnd. I want to go back one day and spend a week. It is the most laid back town. The hotels and houses are build into the pumice stone of the volcano and life there just feels relaxed.

We ended the day back in Fira and got to do our shopping along the main street called Odos Ipapantis- which means Gold Street. The shop owners were all so nice, I got a ton of cute souvenirs. The one thing I will say is that the Greek people are dirty. Not unclean dirty, dirrrty dirty. I will leave it at that.

The last thing that is kinda cool, is that from an archaeological view, Santorini is believed to be the Lost City of Atlantis. I found a little blurb about why they think that, you can read it here. I was quite sad when our day was over, but after climbing up and down all the narrow steep streets with babies and strollers we were so tired! The next day it was on to the main country of Greece!

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com