9-night DCL Mediterranean with Greek Isles cruise - Day 11: Santorini

Santorini

At the beginning of our trip I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw that a longtime friend of ours who lives in Chicago and we hadn’t seen in person in a long time had posted a picture from the Acropolis in Athens. So we sent him a message and asked if he was in Greece. He was! Their family was taking a DIY Greek island hopping vacation (mostly using ferries). We compared itineraries and realized we were going to be in Santorini on the same day so we arranged to meet up.

We got up around 7:30, got ourselves ready, ate breakfast, and made our way to the Walt Disney Theatre a little after 9 AM to get set for the process to go ashore, which is a little complicated in Santorini. First we waited in the theatre for about 30 minutes for our turn for a tender. Once we arrived at the island and disembarked from the tender we went straight for the gondola to take us to the top of the island to the town of Fira. There are actually three methods for getting to the top: the gondola (cable car system), donkey train, or walking 600 steps. We were warned off the latter two. I had read stories of people waiting for hours for the gondola so we were prepared with sunscreen, an umbrella, a fan, a bottle of water and patience. As it happened, there was no wait. We bought our tickets for 10 Euros each and made it to Fira at around 10 AM. 

We took a short walk over to the Museum of Prehistoric Thera. This small museum holds artifacts from the archaeological site of Akroteri that is on the island and is basically the Pompeii of Greece. There was a volcanic eruption 3,700 years ago and the whole town was buried. Most of the items unearthed are in the museum but you can also visit the site and see it, which is apparently pretty cool (we didn’t have time to go there).

We spent about 45 minutes at the museum and it was actually a really great little museum. They had removed a lot of the frescos from the walls at the archaeological site to preserve them and have them in the museum and they are absolutely stunning. It’s well worth a visit. We were ahead of my projected timetable and it was a little early for lunch but we decided to get some anyway. We went to a really cute little cafe I had previously found that looked good called Pelican Kipos Cafe and had a nice lunch and would definitely recommend it, especially the little doughnuts for dessert. We finished up around noon and walked over to the coordinates I had mapped out for the city bus. I wasn’t sure how this was going to shake down, but I trusted the research I did (big thanks to Scott over at the Disney Cruise Line Blog). We found the bus stop with no problem and hopped on the bus marked Oia giving the driver 2 Euros each (cash only).

After about a 30 minute drive we found ourselves in the town of Oia (pronounced EE-yah) which is the town you’re probably picturing in your mind when you’re thinking of Santorini with it's white walls and blue domes. Our friend John and his wife Sue found us at the bus stop and we all set off together to find some good picture spots. They were staying in an AirBnB on the hill and said the sunrise and sunsets are particularly amazing. We found a little cafe with a good view and we all enjoyed some coffee and treats while we caught up a bit. After that, we walked on a bit more before parting ways so they could get back to their family vacation and we could do a little more exploring, shopping, and, of course, finding cats to pet (rare creatures we don't have at home). We didn’t spend too much longer because it was insanely sunny and hot (once again) and most of the shops have pretty much the same type of thing (except for the one with all the crazy jewelry and marionettes). 

We made our way back to the little plaza where the bus dropped us off and waited for the return bus to Fira. We took the 3:20 bus and arrived back in Fira at 3:50 and this is where things got a bit crazy. Folks on the cruise group chat were saying that the line for the cable car back down the mountain was about 2 hours long. That was a problem since the last tender would be at 5:30 PM for a 6 PM all-aboard. The other ship in port that day (Norwegian Epic) had a 4 PM all aboard so we thought that those folks would all be sorted out by then and it would just be our ship. And maybe it was (though I heard there were still people in the gondola line for the Epic at 4 PM). The problem here is that the gondola is not a continuously moving cable car. It has six that go up on one side as six go down on the other side. And the car only holds six people and it’s about a five minute trip, plus time to load and unload. Assuming each car goes up and down completely full (maybe not because some parties don't want to split up), you’re only moving approximately 36 people every 10 minutes or so. So if you’ve got a ship of about 4,000 people trying to all get back on at once and you’re only moving a little over 200 people an hour. That math doesn’t work. 

Many of the DCL sponsored excursions actually tendered to and from a different dock (Athinios, which is also a ferry dock) so that helps with a large number of the people, but traditionally, they only tendered to that dock and then were delivered back to Fira to get down the standard way. But DCL was gathering people and taking them back on the excursion buses to Athinios and we heard that they were going to have some shuttles also to take folks that had not been on ship-sponsored excursions. We went to the place where people were supposed to be meeting up for that but it was total chaos and none of the crew members there knew what was happening and then I heard some people say it was actually back down the hill we had just climbed up. (Did I mention it was brutally hot and sunny?) So I trekked down the hill and found a new line for a shuttle bus down there and texted back to Roger and Emmaline to meet me. 

By this point it’s around 4:15 PM and they tell us that they’ll have a shuttle for us at 5 PM. Oof. So they started sticking a few people at a time on any empty seats they had on the DCL excursion buses and finally they got a couple more shuttle buses at around 4:30. So we all pile in and they take us down the side of the cliff on a totally harrowing crazy switchback road to the Athinios tender dock. And we all get off and pile onto a bunch of tenders. It’s 5 PM by this point and there are also tenders coming from the gondola/donkey/stair insanity (I heard a lot of people walked down to avoid the gondola line). There are two places for tender boats to pull up to the side of the ship and the tenders held either 70 or 115 people so you can see where this is going. We waited on the rocking and roiling and sunny tender for about 45 minutes before ours was able to pull up alongside and we could get back on. As you can see in the photo below there are two tenders at the ship and three already waiting, then we rolled up and while we waited at least three more showed up. All told, it took us 2 hours to get back to the ship from the time we arrived back in Fira from the city bus.

We were hot, tired, sweaty, hungry, and a little sea sick. We got back to the room and quickly showered, arriving 15 minutes late to dinner at Royal Court. But Jay said it was all good. He’s a pro. After dinner we all watched Ellis Lucero play the piano in the atrium before going up to deck four to catch the sunset. We missed it but the sky was still pretty anyway. The show for the evening was a ventriloquist we had previously seen but weren’t keen to see again plus it was opposite Ellis Lucero and Emmaline was becoming a big fan of his sets. I mentioned before that we had never seen this schedule on a DCL cruise before with the variety acts between dinner seatings. It made things awkward when we weren’t at dinner and made it hard to get good seats to the things we did want to see in the theatre after dinner because we were usually finishing up right when they were starting.

At 8:45 I went to drawing and learned to draw Pluto. I had never learned Pluto before so that was fun. While I was waiting for the drawing to begin I was practicing my Donald and the crew member who was going to lead the drawing, Bianca, saw it and said it was much better than her Donald and could I teach her how I did it to help her get better. I promised her that I would on the final sea day. While I saw drawing, Emmaline went to catch Ellis Lucero’s second set. After that we were tired so we all went to bed early that night.