When we woke up and looked outside there were three other cruise ships anchored near Santorini!  One of them, The Odyssey of the Seas, was huge. (It has a maximum capacity of 5500 people.)  Hmmmm, that’s a lot of people on an island.

Santorini is one of 32 islands, called the Cyclades, forming a circle around the Island of Milos. A huge earthquake devastated Santorini in 1956.  As a result, there were a lot of resources and attention put into the island. That made Santorini famous.  Tourism is the primary industry, followed by wine making.

We visited the village of Oia, home of the iconic white buildings with blue accents.

The color scheme goes back to the late 1930s when there was a cholera epidemic. It was believed that the white paint had some kind of agent to reduce the cholera transmission rates.  The blue is an accent in tribute to the Greek flag. It isn’t a rule that people must adhere to the white with blue but most seem to use these colors.

Although most views are stunning there are a few iconic ones. These people lined up to get one of those shots.

We walked the other direction so we could see more than that one view in our allotted time!

It’s a good life for this Santorini cat!

The island hotels and villas are beautiful with beautiful views!

There are still people in line to get the best picture.  I’m happy with ours!

Our tour moved on and we had a quick photo opportunity at a beach with black sand!

The next stop went back into island history. In the 11th Century,  a holy icon was received on Santorini.  It appeared to move locations and the locals followed the icon before settling here. The current Panagia Episkopi Church is on the site of an 11th century monument to the Holy Madonna, complete with the holy icons.

This building is from the 14th century and survived a large fire in the 18th century.

The original holy icons were stolen and later replaced.

Our next stop was for refreshment. There is no agricultural production on Santorini except grapes for wine.  The plants are small due to hard conditions with wind, heat and lack of rain.  Eighty percent of the grapes grown on Santorini are for white wine. 

We had a very nice stop at Santo Wines.  We tasted  one dry white, one dry red, and their specialty – a chocolate flavored red.  We had a delicious snack of cheese and tomatoes and olives.  The dry cracker was interesting.

Our initial thought every time we looked out across the island was that there was snow! No. What we saw was the mostly white houses on the island top.

The end of our tour was in Santorini’s capital of Fira.   It was very, very crowded with passengers from four cruise ships, and other visitors, and the line to take the cable car down the cliff face was very long. We progressed slowly for about an hour before boarding. Unfortunately, we experienced a few people who were not on their best take your turn in line behavior.  After waiting so long, the ride down took only moments!

There was another option, and we should have taken it!  The zigzag wall is a stairway.  There are donkeys on that stairway.  I assume you can hire them to take you down but I would have just enjoyed seeing them while walking! Those that did walk down said it was fine, just very, very hot with no relief from the sun.

This was our view of Santorini as we sailed away.  It was very beautiful but just too crowded with four ships!  If we ever choose to return we will stay at a villa overlooking the sea.  We could just sit and enjoy the view until the cruise people were gone!

We were on Santorini on September 29, 2023

Next up:  Corinth