Day 7 - Saturday, June 17, 2023 - Santorini, Greece - Part 2

Day 7 - Saturday, June 17, 2023 - Santorini, Greece - Part 2

 Once we made it to the top, we found ourselves in Fira.  Trek messaged a few car rental places in Fira earlier in the day to see if anyone had a 7 passenger vehicle available.  One of them did so we went there to rent a van to explore the island. 

We hopped in & drove to Pirgos.  There are several “blue churches” in Pirgos & blue roofed churches are what the tourists want to see.  We parked the van & spend an hour just exploring the village.  Pictures & words don’t do justice for how beautiful these villages are.  All the buildings are beautiful white with blue rooftops & it’s just indescribable.  Everyone needs to go here once in their lives.  After exploring Pirgos, we drove to Megalochori, but it was PACKED & we couldn’t find a parking place.  But we drove around it & saw more beautiful white buildings.

The kids were itching to visit the beach so we drove to Perissa Beach which is known as the “black sand beach” of Santorini.  None of the beaches there are free, but you can sit under beautiful umbrellas on beach chairs if you order food or drinks from the restaurants that own the beachfront property.  We found a great area of beach & the restaurant there that owned it told us we could pay 30 Euro to rent an umbrella for the day, or we could order 30 Euro worth of food & use the umbrella for the day, so we ordered 30 Euro worth of delicious smoothies.  We had pina coladas, strawberry daiquiris, mango/strawberry smoothies, & more.  It was SO fun.  The kids were in heaven swimming at the beach.  The waves were great, the water wasn’t too deep, & the sand was SO COOL.  Santorini island is a volcanic island so the “Sand” is actually some form of “rocky ash.”  The kids were fascinated with it, & though it didn’t sculpt like sand for sandcastles, the water was perfect & they spent a couple hours enjoying our time there.  Lorien & I hung out under the umbrella (we burn way too easily), & it was just a wonderfully peaceful visit.

Our last stop of the day was our beautiful drive to Oia at the tip top of the crescent of Santorini Island.  This is the most famous city on Santorini where most tourists visit.  I hear the sunset here is the most beautiful sunset on Earth.  We drove to the very top point of the city & parked in a massive dirt parking lot on a huge slope (that we were afraid we’d never get out of with the manual van we rented), then walked to the castle of Santorini.  From the top of that castle you can see all of Oia & it was SPECTACULAR.  My goodness, that was the most beautiful area I’ve ever seen in my life.  Pictures just don’t even begin to show you how gorgeous Oia is.  You have to see it in person.  We spent some time there taking pictures & exploring a little bit, then we went back to the van to drive it back to the rental place.  Of course in the 40 minute drive back we didn’t find a single gas station to gas it up, but the rental place told us it was fine & that we didn’t use enough gas to worry about it anyway.  (Great rental place by the way, very friendly, honest, & great prices.). 

We decided to walk around Fira a little big before going back down to the boat.  We still had about 2.5 hours before dinner & 4 hours before the ship left so we enjoyed shopping in the little shops.  Taya found an adorable green & white Grecian skirt, Lorien got an awesome Grecian ring, & I found the most incredible nativity for my collection.  I love unique nativities & finding one in Greece was a must for me, so when I saw this one in the window of a jewelry shop, I knew I had to have it.  It’s a hand painted picture of the nativity scene in a cave with angels, animals, & all sorts of fun things all around it.  It’s mounted on wood & surrounded by gold & silver.  The whole thing almost makes me laugh because it’s SO busy.  Gold, silver, angels with swords, the colors, it’s just SO MUCH, but I love it because it’s so much like the Greek churches we were seeing all day. 

While the kids shopped, Trek, Bladen, & I ran to one more blue roofed church for some pictures, then we headed back to the main area to take the cable car back down the cliff.  (Donkeys don’t go down, just up.). There was a huge line, but we only waited about 45 minutes in line before we got on the cable car.  We made several friends waiting in line (which was actually 2 huge lines that merged together for some weird reason) & talked about our cruises.  (I still think we got the best cruise there).  Once we finally got on the cable car, we were at the bottom of the cliff in less than 2 minutes.  It was amazing.  Lorien & Trek didn’t like the heights & the glass enclosure of the cable car, but they were brave & survived.

We got on the tinder boat & headed back to our ship & made it just in time for dinner at 5:30.  Tonight’s dinner was amazing.  I had french onion soup, chicken cordon bleu, & cream puffs for dessert. 

After dinner we went straight to the theater to watch the broadway tribute show which was awesome.  They did songs from Hairspray, Chicago, Little Shop of Horrors, West Side Story, & more.  Those singers/performers were the best. 

After that we all went back to our rooms, took much needed showers after swimming all day, & went to bed early so we could get up early for tindering to Mykonos the next day.