Dateline – Santorini, Greece
Yesterday was a sea day. We woke up and opened the blinds to find our ship steaming down the Dardanelles and under the massive 1915 Canakkale suspension bridge, the world’s longest which connects Europe with Asia. From there, we slid past the cliffs of Gallipoli with its monuments to both the Allied dead and the Turkish dead in the botched campaign of World War I. I don’t know much about the Ottomans in World War I other than they chose the losing side and most of what I know about Gallipoli comes from the 1980s Australian film of the same name which was far too depressing for me to watch again since seeing it in its original run. It stars a young and dreamy Mel Gibson prior to international stardom and revealing just what an unpleasant ass he truly is.
From there we sailed off into the Aegean Sea and past various famous Greek islands including Lesbos, Chios, and Naxos. The day was somewhat cool, but sunny so there was much deck time and I spent a while with my script working on my lines. Later, after lunch, cocktails were consumed and so much for continuing with memorization. Thomas went off for a massage in the spa, but that’s not really my thing and so I spent some time writing before dinner. After dinner, I went to the show in the theatre. The theatre is gorgeous, they spent a gazillion dollars on an amazing technical set up, and about $1.95 on the writing. It was about an hour of cut rate Cirque de Soleil choreography to various 80s and 90s pop hits delivered by singers who had some of the worst technique I’ve heard. Vocal nodes are in their future… probably by next week. It was enough to send me to bed early.
This morning, when we awoke, we were at anchor in Santorini, a small archipelago in the Cyclades formed when the ancient volcano of Thera blew its top and the caldera filled with sea water. It’s still an active volcano, having last erupted in 1950, but fortunately it was nice and quiet today. The main island of Thera is about 2/3 of the caldera rim and a steep cliff facing the old crater and a gentler slope on the other side. We were anchored on the Western cliff side and, after breakfast, the two of us took a tender into the dock. There is very little at the water’s edge, the main towns perched at the top of the cliff some thousand feet above. To access, there are three choices, a gondola, walking up some five hundred and fifty steps or, the most traditional, on donkey back. We chose to be traditionalists, were soon mounted on a pair of plodding donkeys, and up we went. The weather report had said we were in for rain today and it had rained a tad earlier in the morning so the lovely smell of wet donkey was an accompaniment. Fortunately, the clouds lessened over the morning and the rest of the day was quite lovely.
Once up top in the town of Fira, we were able to marvel at the views out over the caldera and take in all of the picturesque white Greek towns with their domes and blue roofs clinging to the edge of the cliff. We decided to just walk and explore on foot, first doing some shopping (I bought a shirt with a pattern of the Greek mati – the omnipresent talisman against the evil eye) and then taking a footpath for a mile or so along the caldera rim, stopping along the way for a lunch of salad and smoked octopus (really quite good) and additional cocktails. It ended up being a picture postcard perfect day. (Pictures available on Instagram and other posts). There were a lot of stairs, a lot of hill walking, and it did make the legs somewhat tired but in a good way. It is the last week of the season so a lot of the tourist accommodations and shops were getting ready to go into off season mode and the towns and paths were not crowded making it even nicer. We kept ourselves occupied until late afternoon when, as the sun was beginning to set, we took the gondola down the hill and tendered back to the boat for dinner. We decided to skip tonight’s show (someone impersonating great singers of the past) so as to get some sleep for tomorrow’s shore leave in Mykonos. But first, we watched Die Hard as Thomas had never seen it. He gave it a thumbs up.
