Day 12, Santorini

We were scheduled to dock at Santorini at 8:15am.
This was about 7:30am, we were approaching Santorini.

We went to the top deck to watch Galileo sailing into Santorini's harbor.
It was breakfast time, most of the team members were having breakfast.

Still some distance ....

Passing the scenic village of Oia on our left.

Another view of Oia
 

The village of Fira is straight ahead, on top of the cliff.

As a small ship, Galileo docked at Skala Fira, right below the main town Fira.
The zigzag path up the cliff is donkey's path.
To its left the visible cable towers support the cable car lift.

We took the cable car up to Fira. The same ticket can be used for a donkey ride as well.

Fira, the busiest and most commercialized town in Santorini.

View of the caldera from Fira. Galileo is the brown ship toward the bottom of the picture.

You can smell it. The whole donkey's path smelled repulsively of donkey droppings.
We walked straight to our bus, which drove us to the beautiful village of Oia.

One of the beautiful churches in Oia.
There are many blue-domed white churches in Santorini. We did not stay long
enough to tell which are the most photographed churches.

In Oia
(It was blazingly hot under the sun, must be over 100F.)

In Oia

Oia.

Many cafes in Oia have caldera views. We went to this one for ice cold beverage.

Outside a souvenir shop in Oia.
We bought post cards, multimedia CDs which turned out to be not of good quality.

Our OAT bus drove us from Oia to this restaurant in the village of Pirgos for lunch.
Pirgos is located in the south center of the island, near Boutari Winery which
we did not have time to tour. (See two more blue domed churches in the background?)

We did not ask for this restaurant's name, but their Greek food was delicious.
Santorini tomato salad, Grilled eggplant, Tzatziki, Grilled meat, Pita bread, ...

..., Fried potato, Stuffed tomato, Fava beans (not pictured), ... 

... and dessert (a sweat pastry) besides a pitcher of white local wine.

Inside the Prehistorical Museum in Fira.
The excavated ancient Akrotiri was closed due to a collapsed roof, so after lunch we
came back to Fira to visit this museum to see collections from the Minoan Akrotiri which
was buried during the volcanic eruption around 1450 B.C. that blew out part of Santorini.

Minoan utensils excavated from Akrotiri

Frescoes excavated from Akrotiri 

We then had free time in Fira until 4:15pm 

Another view of Fira 

We went back to Galileo 30 minutes early, because it was so hot we needed a shower to chill out.

Shortly after 5pm we learned we had to pack quickly to take the 7:30pm ferry back to Athens.
Since large boats dock at a different port, Athinios, here we were in a tender
which was transporting us the short distance from Galileo to Athinios port.

The Blue Star ferry arrived. It was to take us back to Athens over night.

(Sunset Sequence #1) We went to an outside deck on the ferry to watch sunset.

(Sunset sequence #2)

(Sunset sequence #3)

(Sunset sequence #4)

(Sunset sequence #5)

OAT treated us to a 1st class dinner on the ferry's First Class dining room.

Our appetizer. The sausage was a bit salty.

Besides too much food, the main dish, chicken, was VERY salty.

Coffee was not included in our dinner, so Vincent and Len had coffee at a bar on the ferry.
It definitely was a very long and eventful day, to say the least.