Santorini - Sunday 29 September

It must have been at least 30C in Santorini. We made our way over to shore at around 10 am by way of a tender, after the main crowd had moved on. Luckily there were no other big ships today, and it was quite pleasant in the main town of Fira.

We have visited Santorini before, and love the views across the volcanic caldera (still active), and from towns perched right over the cliff tops. Considering they had a devastating earthquake in 1956, we weren't too impressed with how things were built now! We headed up on the cable car, and walked along some of the paths/streets we didn't have time for last time.

We had a look in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral and then took Rick Steve's advice and visited the Museum of Prehistoric Thira, nearby. It had excellent displays of artefacts found on the island at the ancient site of Akrotiri. This was the largest settlement outside Minoan Crete, 2000-3000 BC! However, the site had been abandoned around 1630 BC when Santorini had a massive eruption, bigger than Krakatoa. This museum was really interesting, with clearly marked displays and good explanations of what we were seeing. We also enjoyed its air-conditioning!

We had a look in some of the shops along the alleyways, rather like those in Mykonos, but a lot more pleasant somehow. We wanted to have a cool drink with a view over the cliffs, and settled for coffee frappes at one place. These were excessively priced, but you pay for the view. We ended up talking to a couple at the next table who were also Kiwis. They were in a group of four who had chartered a yacht and were sailing around the Greek islands, sailing the yacht themselves. They were from Auckland. It was a very pleasant conversation.

We wandered around some more, and were going to head back to the ship when we discovered another walkway right along the cliff-tops, heading towards the town of Oia. We only walked for about 20 minutes - you really had to watch your footing and the views were very distracting (stunning, actually). We ended up taking a very pleasant break in another cafe along the way. I had a Coke, and David had some Mythos beer.

Then we headed back towards the main part of Fira, joined the now long and growing queue for the cable car (we weren't going to repeat the donkey track after last time!), and headed back to the ship for a late, light lunch - arriving about 2:45 pm.

We headed poolside on Deck 15, our favourite spot for relaxing, and in the shade. We read our books and talked to some Kiwis from Orewa who were relaxing in deck chairs next to us.

Sail-away was magnificent, and then we had dinner at a table for two. There was a sale on watches this evening and David bought a new watch, then we headed for the show by an absolutely amazing pianist (he called himself 'Count Dimas'). He also played the piano accordion, a wooden recorder-type of instrument that sounded like a flute, and some other 'instrument' he created himself from rubber balls. His music ranged from classical to modern and he got a well-deserved standing ovation.