Friday, October 8

Kusadasi, Turkey. We were here for a second day. It’s a very good thing that I took photos of the harbor and Kusadasi yesterday, because this morning there were two “apartment blocks at sea” docked on either side of us. Our veranda view of the harbor and city was totally blocked by the Celebrity Century, and the other side was blocked by the Thompson (an English company) Celebration which used to be the Niew Amsterdam.

The wind was up and the temperature was down making the open deck areas pretty chilly. We sat out on Lido for a while before lunch, then Jill went for a walk in to look at shops ashore while I stayed on board and looked for a warmer area to sit. When Jill got back she said that there was another Celebrity ship, the Eclipse, docked on the other side of the Century that was even bigger! Ye gads! I am even gladder that we did our touring yesterday!

To pass the afternoon we found deck chairs where the wind was blocked by the Celebration. Then after a while we came back to our cabin and watched a movie. A nice, quiet afternoon. Resting up is a good plan since we sail this evening at 11:00 p.m. and have tours at Santorini very, very early tomorrow morning.

Fortunately, all three slab-sided ships sailed in late afternoon, so Jill and I were treated to a second evening of viewing beautiful Kusadasi’s lights at night. It is the most colorful night-scape I’ve ever seen on a cruise.

Saturday, October 9

Santorini, Greece. Up early enough (i.e. before dawn) to see the lights of Santorini as we arrived. Two other large ships were also here today: Ibero Cruceros’ Grand Celebration and Costa’s Deliciosa..

I canceled my tour today as my back was acting up, and I just couldn’t face the stairs down to a tender, the tender itself, and a bus tour probably followed by either a cable car (not my favorite mode of transportation) or a donkey ride (of all things) from Thira back down to another tender back to the ship. This photo shows the donkey trail leading up to (or down from) Thira. When Jill got back she confirmed my decision by saying that the tours were lots of walking and even more steps. We figure that everyone who lives there must have extremely good legs.

640 of our passengers went on tour, leaving only 168 aboard, many of whom will head ashore on their own. Having off-loaded our touring folks at one village (Athinios, I believe, or maybe Megalochori), the ship headed a short way north to Thira where the captain and his crew did about six hours of very creative drifting until we sailed at about 3:00 p.m.

Nonetheless, Santorini is lovely. Here in the caldera left when  the volcano Stongyle erupted some 3,600 years ago, we were surrounded by islands with steep, almost vertical, cliffs topped by sparkling white villages just like all the photos you’ve ever seen of Santorini. The sky was very blue with beautiful white clouds.

The various islands are not really islands, but are one land mass flooded by the eruption. There are actually five pieces of the original island left above sea level, with the majority of the villages on the largest one. Supposedly they have beaches here, also grow grapes and make fine wines, but that must be on the outer sides of the islands as all I could see was bare cliffs with little white towns on top.