Beautiful Santorini

Things really picked up today with our overnight sail from Athens to dock in Santorini about 8 a.m.  We
slept in (still sleeping off that 7 hour difference), had a late breakfast, and headed by tender (a small ferry for people) from the Viking Sea to the island of Santorini, one of the Cyclades.

Santorini (Thera to the Greeks) lies in the southern Aegean Sea, about 120 miles southwest from the mainland.  It is the largest island of a small circular group of 5 islands formed by the Santorini caldera ("cooking pot" of volcanos).  The population is a mere 15,000 year round, but it reminded me of my days of living in Sandusky when the Cedar Point crowd swells the numbers greatly in the summer.  Last summer in Santorini there were about 3M visitors from cruise ships, up to 20,000+ per day!

There are a number of villages and towns on the island of Santorini.  Our main objective was Oja, also known as Pano Meria. It is considered the most picturesque village of Santorini and its most visited spot for sunset viewing, reputedly the most famous sunset in the world.  

The switchback
To get to it, we had to venture up from the port of Athenos on a switchback, two-lane road being driven in a large bus and sharing the road with some of those 20,000 people.  I'm not great with heights so I dared only once to look out over the cliff going up that switchback.  Made me sweat!

One of the villages we passed was Pyrgos and I note it because our guide told us that 200 people lived there and went to one of the 18 churches (yes, I said eighteen) faithfully.  Greek Orthodox is the prevalent religion and I could only think of my dear cousins in Steubenville, Ohio, birthplace of my late mother, Dorothy, because we've been to their Greek Orthodox church many times for the weddings of my cousins.

Beautiful Santorini
After about 40 minutes, we pulled into a bus parking area in Oja and ventured up the hillside into town and its main square.  There were scads of shops and restaurants on a narrow street running both directions away from the square and, of course, we found a way to shop for ourselves and others for some fun things.  For example, our guide had the coolest sunglasses - very light almost transparent frames with blue lenses - so I had to have a pair like them.  Cheryl found a few Greek scarves and dresses that she'll look great in or give as presents to others.  We were only there shopping for about 90 minutes but did some serious damage - and that is what makes vacations like this fun, for sure.

While it was a day crowded with people and traffic, the vibe was wholly different than the crowds and traffic in Athens.  My sense of aaaahhhhhh (or kwan for devotees of Jerry Maguire) is restored, and I'm grooving big time on being on this trip and seeing these wonderful places.  Tonight we sail on to Olympia (Katakolon) for our visit tomorrow.  This is the site of the original games where athletes competed for nothing less than the favor of the gods.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's update and I'll share whether I saw Zeus or Athena in Olympia.  


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