Best of Greece and 7 Day Aegean Cruise
Day Fourteen – 24 Sept 2009
Weather: Sunny, 28
Terrain – Agios Nickolas, Crete – easy (street walking)
Santorini – Thira and Oia optional – easy (street walking) (until you want to return to the ship. Then you take your life in your hands 🙂
I decided against taking either of the optionals on Crete today. The Knosses optional involved almost 3 hours on a bus and the Taste of Crete involved a lot of driving as well as wine tasting and I don’t drink. Instead, George offered a short tour of the town where we docked – Agios Nicholas. The usual port of call is Heraklion but it has limited space so that Louis got shafted and has to dock an hour from Heraklion (which is so much closer to Knosses).
George’s tour didn’t start till 8:30, so we got to sleep in. I had breakfast in the buffet and checked my email. We wandered out onto the dock and waited for George. A large portion of the Trafalgar group showed up.
George took us along the shore, showed us the horn that Zeus accidentally removed from a goat, if I heard him right.
Then showed us a small beach only a two minute walk from the ship that we were allowed to visit. We walked into the streets and crossed a bridge and along a short canal that led to a “lake” in the middle of the town. It’s very picturesque.
George showed us a statue of a famous man from Crete and told us that we all knew the name. Everyone shook their head and he told us the Athens airport was named after him. Given how bleary eyed many of us were when we arrived, it’s no wonder we didn’t notice the name of the airport.
George let us go for some free time and we descended on the town’s square and two commercial streets. I got my t-shirts and fridge magnets and took a lot of cat pics.
After I got a pic of every cat in the downtown, I headed back to the ship, stopping with some others to have something to drink on a terrace next to the ship until 11. On board, we went immediately to the conference room for a meeting with George. He discussed the tender process at Santorini and gave out the tags for our luggage as well as the Trafalgar evaluation (then he noted that when we come to the question that asks what we liked most about the tour, that we should remember that he, and only he, controls where our luggage goes tomorrow 🙂
Jokes aside, he was the best tour guide I’ve had (and I still rank him as one of the best after 12 more tours). He was funny, personable and very flexible.
The optional crowd was a little late getting back and the ship left at 11:35 for Santorini. The cruise took about five hours. I had lunch then spent the rest of the time packing my bags. About an hour before we arrived in Santorini, the island became visible and I went up to the tenth deck and staked out my spot for taking pictures…..or flying.
The ship followed two other Louis ships into the caldera.
The island is as impressive as I expected. Over three thousand years ago, the island was intact and a volcanic eruption blew the island apart and the resulting tsunami obliterated towns on the Crete coast. Many people believe this is the Atlantis that Plato spoke of as the thriving island sank, leaving only a semi-circular section of about 75 square kilometres. It has a population of roughly 12,000 and the towns of Thira and Oia are perched on the edge of the rim. The colours and layers of the shear cliffs are fantastic.
The tender pulled up near the bus pick up area which is not where we will return to the tender. Our group got off on the first or second tender (again, they can carry dozens each). It took a couple minutes to get to the shore and the bus took us up a knee-weakening switchback to the top of the rim that seemed endless. When we got to the top, we drove toward Oia, about 20 minutes away. The road followed the peak of the rim. The east side of the island is a lowland that looks to be agricultural land, but we didn’t go down into the nice flat land.
Nope.
We drove along a road that reminded me of the hillside roads you see in Hollywood movies where the road is cut into the hill complete with a shear cliff to one side – the kind of road where cars fly off and burst into flames.
At one point the road gets very narrow and we came to a screeching halt when we met another bus. Our bus had to back up to let it go (and I thought the mirror would scrap the side of our bus). We arrived in Oia and the guide brought us to the overlook that gives us a fantastic view of the caldera.
Yeah, that’s the switchback to the right.
We took pictures then took advantage of the hour of free time and the late day sunlight to do a little shopping. 
The single narrow shopping street was packed. The guide said there had been twelve cruise ships in and more than 55 buses full of tourists that visited Oia that day. It felt as though they were all in Oia at the same time.
I found my t-shirts and fridge magnet (including one made from lava) and after a few more photos, I returned to the bus, happy to be sitting on the side away from the cliffs. It was a shorter drive to Thira and the guide showed us to the cable car….and the two thousand people lined up to take it down to the tenders. The other option was to walk down or take a mule down the same path.
We opted for the mules.
Our guide let us go and we started walking toward the cable car where she had told us we would find the way down to the mules. As we passed the cable car line, some jackass got it in his head that we were trying to cut in. Yeah, right. What fool thinks a group of 40 people are going to just join the line and think its okay? A few choice words ensued as we all yelled “we’re looking for the $#&%* mules” at the same time. That shut them up pretty quick. When some of us tried to pass through the line to get to the path down, they refused to move. Again, a few choice words were necessary to make them move.
Unbelievable.
Optional Opinion: This one is a must. You get off the ship much faster and with so little time on the island, you want to do as much as possible. The view from Oia is gorgeous. The only problem with doing this tour in the fall is that the sun goes down much too early.
Our group got split up in the melee of trying to find the path down to the mules, but the rest of us finally found our way down to the stairs and saw the others in our group already on the mules and going down.
Now, everyone says this is a dangerous way to descend and some even say it’s not safe to walk down.
Why??? I have absolutely no idea!!
The way down is rock stairs that are wide and long with a wall between you and the thousand foot drops. Walking down is completely safe. Taking the mules down was a hoot. The animals are led in groups of three or four. They’re very sure-footed, and according to horse owner in our group, the mules are well cared for (good coats and weight). The cost of the mule ride is paid for with a blue ticket given to us as we had departed the ship. (We learned later that one woman on another tour a few weeks ago fell and hurt her head, so don’t do the mules unless you’re comfortable on a horse).
The alternate to walking down is the cable car but those that took it said they were in the line well over two hours. So, unless you have a mobility issue, the walk down is very doable. There’s no hurry so you can talk your time. Just watch for the mule landmines. (And for this reason, I recommend that if you go in September or later, you bring a little flashlight with you).
It was dark as we descended and the view was magnificent with the ships just off shore with their lights on as it got dark.
We took about fifteen minutes to make it 2/3rds of the way down when the guide got off his mule and said “fini.” We dismounted and walked the rest of the way. We all managed to make it down with the bottoms of our sneakers intact. Those that walked down said it took up to 30 minutes.
There are shops at the bottom for some last minute shopping. There was no panic to get on the tender because George said they would not leave Santorini without everyone on board. He said a Cristal rep remains on the top of the cable car until they hear that the last passenger is aboard. With Athens as our last stop tomorrow and the problems taking the cable car, the ship doesn’t have much of a choice.
We took the tender back to the ship, and after changing out of my mule clothes, I went to the sit down dinner which was open seating. I had Vegetable broth soup, turkey and potatoes. I returned to my cabin to finish packing as the bags need to be out by midnight at the latest. When the ship began to leave just before 10 pm, I went outside to watch. It’s impressive to see the lights lining the top of the rim.
I checked my email and used up the last ten minutes of the hour of internet that I had purchased when I arrived then finished packing my bags, ensuring I had clothes for tomorrow morning.
George told us he had one passenger come to his cabin wearing only a towel and saying she had nothing to wear cause she had packed it all the night before. (I tried to convince a few to go to his cabin at 4 am wearing only towels, but got no takers 🙂
Go to Day Fifteen
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