In the 2005 movie “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” a teenager named Lena rides a donkey up the steep hill to visit her grandparents in scenic Santorini.
The part of Lena is played by Alexis Bledel, who for several years played Rory Gilmore on one of our family’s favorite shows, “The Gilmore Girls,” which undoubtedly helped my youngest daughter Amy relate to her Greek vacation.
When Amy learned we would be visiting Santorini, she insisted she would ride the donkey up the hill.
She enjoyed the ride up so much that she rode back down at the end of the day, and she thoroughly enjoyed every moment in between.
That’s the perfect attitude with which to approach a port: have specific objectives but flexibility, and always have great enthusiasm.
Her mother wasn’t as thrilled with the ride up, on which her donkey bashed into another donkey, cutting Julie’s leg.My nephew Jered rode a donkey up, but after reaching the peak, he decided to head back to the ship to recover from many late nights of partying in the disco.
Most of us had decided to take the tram to the top.
On paper, Santorini seems to be a simple port to explore.
Either the tram or donkey would be four Euros.
For us, it would essentially be a postcard port.
We weren’t trying to learn any history but rather simply enjoy the amazing beauty of the blue domed buildings high above the deep blue sea.
In reality, the port was congested with too many tourists, most coming from cruise ships, making the line for either the tram or donkey rides long.
Rollie had the best idea: hike to the top.He beat us all to the top by a half hour and got a great aerobic workout.
He said that he received several offers to ride donkeys on his way up, probably because some people didn’t enjoy the feeling of riding a wobbly creature into old guardrails next to sheer cliffs and got off before making it to the summit.
The tram itself was a quick ride, but the line took a terribly long time, with hundreds of people cutting in front of us until we finally reached a walled area where we could block them back from wall to wall.
Having our tenders delayed, also presumably due to port congestion, had me quite frustrated by the time I made it to the village. I began to wonder if I should have paid $66 for a shore excursion that would have beat the crowds with an earlier tender, but then Santorini became wonderful.
On top is Fira, a quaint village of white-washed small shops lining cobblestone streets.
Our oldest daughter Gina stayed in that village with her Aunt Cheryl, who has health issues that limit her mobility.
They enjoyed lunch and some browsing before taking the tram back down.Laszlo wasn’t there, having taken a Volcano Hot Springs Tour instead.
The rest of us hustled through this village to catch a bus to Oia (1.2 Euros each way), where we found what we expected: engaging architecture along breathtaking vistas.
After snapping lots of photos, we began looking for a restaurant and found one with the most amazing views, but there were no gyros, which Jay, Amy and my niece Kendra had been craving since I started bragging about the gyros I had in Heraklion with Gina and Rollie.
I wanted a gyro too, but the prices for the view restaurant felt as steep as the cliffs of Santorini, with a Diet Coke alone costing 4.7 Euros.
The four of us made an awkward retreat, leaving Jacque, Rollie, Kelsey and Julie to enjoy a meal with a spectacular view.
The four of us walked back toward the bus stop to where we had seen a gyro café.
We pointed to the sign to get the gyro combination plate for 5 Euros.
It looked like a soda and two gyros, but we assumed it was one cut in half to show both ends. Kendra chose another plate that had French fries, gyro and soda for the same price, which should have been a clue.When we received our meals, Kendra had what she thought she ordered, while the rest of us had two large gyros and a soda each.
The food was terrific, but we couldn’t eat it all, so we gave some to a cat.
Our view wasn’t as spectacular as on the other side of Oia, but we could see lots of blue water.
After lunch, we caught the bus back to Fira, where we took a leisurely stroll browsing in shops.
Amy led a group onto the donkeys for the downhill ride, while Julie, Jay, Kendra and I sought the perfect cliffside taverna for some ouzo.
The anise-flavored liquor is surprisingly good. I don’t like licorice, so I would think this drink would be appalling to me, but it is really quite excellent. It goes down smoothly.
Then again, I think it was the company more than anything.
We had some other drinks to help quench our thirst, but the ouzo stole the show.
From there, we continued our hike down the hill, giving us more perspective on Rollie’s climb up.
At the base, we found a little swimming area in the ocean next to another taverna.
It didn’t take any arm-twisting to get any of us in the water.The cool, clear water felt amazing.
At a certain point, Jay and Kendra took a break.
We decided to buy some beer at the taverna to essentially pay for using their steps into the water, and Jay, in his wet bathing suit, plopped down on the padded seat.
The waiter came over, quite upset, telling Jay to get up. Holding the damp seat cushion with disgust, the waiter asked, “What can I do with this now?”
He then motioned for Jay and Kendra to be seated in the chairs with cushions removed and wasn’t much happier after taking the beer order
Back in the water, I looked down at my watch and saw it was 4:00.
“What time were we supposed to be back on board?”
I decided to head down to the tender loading area and discovered the last tender was at 4:15.
I ran back to the taverna, waving for the others to join me. They paid for the half-finished drinks and took off running. As we boarded the tender, the crew was loading up their signs, but we weren’t too late!
This, of course, was not the end of our day. We changed into formal clothes and enjoyed sugar-free mojitos at another scenic sail-away in the Crown Viking Lounge.
Another amazing family dinner in the dining room, exchanging stories. Formal portraits followed by our biggest Trivia loss of the trip. We were so bad that we won the booby prize for worst score. We will all cherish those plastic Royal Caribbean keychain tags, for they invigorated us to the point where we won at Trivia the next night (leatherette baggage tags)…but I’m getting ahead of myself again.
I have never been on a cruise so many days without a full production show with costumed singers and dancers. The cruise director announced this was the first show by a new cast that had boarded the ship only the day before. They were a talented bunch of performers, energetically performing songs from movies like “Footloose” and “Dirty Dancing,” but the chemistry wasn’t there yet. Still, we all enjoyed the show.
