![\"2015-10-29_santorini_01\"](\"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/2015-10-29_santorini_01.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nToday, we arrived in Santorini.<\/p>\n
It didn’t start out too well…<\/p>\n
Following our busy day yesterday, we decided a lie-in would be in order. I say ‘lie-in’, but I still set the alarm for 8:30am, which would give us time to get breakfast before going to check out today’s port. So; it was actually gone 8:30am, when I noticed a brown envelope slipped under the cabin door. When I opened it, it contained a ticket and escort notification from the Shore Excursions office… oops!….<\/p>\n
It turned out we were down for escorting duty on a tour due to start at 8am.<\/p>\n
Needless to say; I dashed to the office to apologise and see if we were, indeed, too late, and whether or not the tour had actually gone… sadly, we were, and it had…<\/p>\n
I’m not going to go into the ins and outs here, as to how the error had occurred (check out Tracey’s Blog for that), suffice to say that we were pretty gutted; not only to have missed out on wha looked like it might have been a really good tour, but also the guilt of not turning up for escorting duty lay heavily upon us. After all, this was our second major mishap of the trip (three if you include leaving the cabin key in the security tray), and the potential black marks were mounting up.<\/p>\n
Despite our bad start, the day turned out to be rather wonderful, and Santorini is an island that, having been there, we’re already looking forward to visiting again sometime in the future.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, Santorini used to be a large, round-shaped island. Then, suddenly, sometime in the Bronze Age, it erupted, leaving a crescent-shaped archipelago in its place, with a smattering of small, still-active volcanic islands in its centre.<\/p>\n
Along the tops of what would have been the crater’s outer rim, are villages and townships, bright white against the dark rocks beneath them, the largest of which, Fira, we’d stopped off-shore from. Because the depth of the water in this area is as deep as the steep cliffs surrounding it are high, the Minerva couldn’t drop anchor; instead, it was down in the programme as ‘at drifting’, and access to the mainland was by local tender only.<\/p>\n
Once ashore, the visitor has three options. They can walk up the rough, windy road to the top, from the old port below, should they feel energetic enough; Fira is about 700 metres above sea-level. Failing that, they can take a donkey ride to the top for around 5 euros, or take the cable car (also for about 5 euros each way). Fortunately, the Minerva had had the foresight to provide all guests with two tickets (one each way), free of charge… a no-brainer, then.<\/p>\n