The Journey of A Thousand Steps begins, in this case, with donkey poop

Our last day on the ship started early, in Crete. We docked a the port city of Heraklion and had another excursion planned for this Island. Not quite as historical as the last one in Turkey, it was interesting nonetheless, though we missed George and his yellow umbrella terribly.

This excursion was called “A Taste of Crete” which was to consist of a trip to a winery, a wine tasting, and a sampling of traditional local cuisine. 




(holle on the road up the mountain in crete)

The restaurant that provided the native food and traditional dancing did a nice job, and we were given a few moments to wander around the town after eating – it was nice, but not nearly as captivating as some of the other stops on our trip. The main city on Crete was heavily bombed in WWII, and therefore it has a much more modern feel as it had to be largely rebuilt.



(Holle in the small village)

We headed back to the ship and fell asleep in the sun up on the top deck – now *this* we will really miss! Hanging out in the sun and getting a good midday nap!

Late in the afternoon, we arrived in Santorini. It is a very unusual island, with its major geographical features having been formed during a volcanic eruption in approximately 1450 B.C. It is speculated that the legend of the lost City of Atlantis was inspired by the amount of the island that sunk following that eruption.

We had no excursions planned, but just wanted to wander around, find a café, relax and enjoy the view. But first, we had to get to the top! The disembarkation point is at the bottom of the cliff and there are three ways up: 1) cable car, 2) donkey, or 3) walking. Well, since there are 567 steps to the top, and those are big wide steps of about 3 people steps each, we decided that was right out!

Despite experiencing horse withdrawal, even Libby didn’t want to ride a donkey up, so off we went to get in line for the cable car. The ride to the top was breathtaking and that was due in part to the gasps of “arghh” every time the cable car hit a bump on the posts going up. It was beautiful though.



(view from the cable car)

The town was equally breathtaking – we spent the first little bit escaping from the heat in an internet café, and once the sun was a little less intense, we went out to wander around. Cute shops and the whole view looked like a living postcard



(view from on the hill)

We climbed back up the hill and went to the edge of the cliff and found a fantastic creperie.










Then we got a little worried, having less than an hour to get back to the ship. We found the line for the cable car winding down, around the corner from the station and well back into the town.

Ooops. So, when we heard the announcement that it would take 50 minutes to get onto the cable car, we figured that since we had crepes to burn off anyway, we had better try walking down – 20 mins to walk vs. 50 mins wait for the cable car.

Of course, this allowed me to avoid confronting my terror of dropping out off of the cliff and down to the water.

We found that all the donkey poo actually gave better traction than you’d think, and we walked down, dodging donkeys coming and going and were really proud when we reached the bottom!



It was especially cool to look at this view of the path and tell our new buddy on the ship “hey, I just walked down that!”



(view from the boat -- we walked all the way down that winding path!)

We met a couple of neat folks from the US yesterday and enjoyed chatting with them – even more fun was coming up with names for some of our fellow travelers – “teacher’s pet guy” – essentially friendly, but a bit of a know it all guy, and the “neurotic irritating mom lady” – wow. ‘nuff said. One of the nicest and most interesting people we met on the boat will be known here simply as the “Apple guy” who shall otherwise get to remain anonymous.

We were very proud of our job repacking to come home, until we realized that we had no way to obtain special Clarence (Shirley we just didn’t make an old Airplane movie joke. Ok, so we did. So, sue us. And don't call me Shirley) to get off the boat early to meet our tour guide. We went to bed, having resolved to call Costas, the head of our tour company, who we knew could solve this problem.