Santorini

With the entire world closed, it looks like it may be awhile before I can do any traveling. With that in mind, I’m re-posting from my original blog. I created the blog to keep family informed while I took my mom on a cruise to Greece.

Day 9:

Last night was a formal dinner. Now if you read the dress code on the internet, “formal” means just that, black tie for the men, formal for the ladies. Apparently once at sea, “formal” means please don’t wear your jeans, well ok, as long as they’re clean, ok, just not too torn and dirty, if you wouldn’t mind. Ok, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but had I worn my tux, I had better grab a tray and learn to speak French real fast.

The sea was really rough last night, I went to the customer service desk and most of the people there were getting sea sickness pills. Mom and I did pretty well, we have patches, but haven’t used them yet. During dinner we hit a bump, no other way to describe it, the ship suddenly jumped like we had hit a speed bump. Everyone in the dining room stopped talking for a second. One of out table mates, a German, leaned over and asked mom, was that the iceberg? It was kind of funny. The waiters were having a little trouble moving around, but with one exception, they managed to stay on their feet. We didn’t see the dishes fall, but we heard them.

Our dinner partners were talking about how wonderful the entertainment was the night prior (after the great mime incident, we skipped the next nights show), so we thought we would take a chance and go see the show. It was a singer from South Africa, who sang a mix of American classics like Tom Jones, James Brown, and some international songs. What a great voice. Mom and I both enjoyed the show.

This morning we arrived at Santorini. Right after breakfast we headed to the theater to get our tickets for the tender ride from the ship to the dock (the harbor is not deep enough so tender ships ferry passengers to the shore). Once we got to the theater, the crew saw moms walker and told us to go with the Italian speaking passengers, because the trip would be easier. They gave us a number and told us we would have to listen carefully, because none of the announcements would be in English. The guy making the announcements must have had a heart, because he did make them in Italian, French, German and English.

Ships tender approaching the dock at Santorini

I have to admit, I was a little concerned about mom jumping between two boats that are pitching back and forth. When we got to the boarding point, there were two crewmembers helping people board the ship. What you had to do was stand on a box and wait for the two ships to be at about the same height and step quickly from one to the other. With the help mom just stepped on board. The crewmember on the tender wanted her to sit on a bench right at the back of the ship, mom also wanted to sit at a bench on the back of the ship. Unfortunately they weren’t the same bench. In his best English the Greek crewmember kept saying, “Madam, please sit down”, mom was trying to get to the bench she thought she was supposed to be at. She got a little flustered and finally said “I’m trying” and that seemed good enough. About then another passenger just about landed on his face when the ship pitched. He managed to very ungracefully stay on his feet, jumped up and yelled “Oppah.”

Once you arrive at the dock in Santorini, you have three choices. You can walk up hundreds of steps to get to the city, you can ride a donkey, or you can take a very steep tram ride. We went for the tram.

The view from the tram

Turns out the tram ticket office is one of the few places that has a lift for handicapped people, however after that you still have stairs to climb to get to the tram. The city is built into a cliff, it really is quite beautiful. We did not have much time, just enough for mom to make one shopkeeper pretty happy.