Continuing the day, our tour guides led us on a walk through the village of Megalochori. Megalochori looked like what I thought would be an authentic Greek village would look like. There's many blue domes and pyramid bells, and other types of Greek architecture. I also noticed how many churches there were in a small area. To add a general thought; it seems like wherever you are in the world, the more rural an area is, the more often you will see places of worship.
After the walk through Megalochori, the tour guides finally took us to the village of Oia. This is the place that I think everyone thinks about when they think about and/or see pictures of Santorini. You see these marble-white abodes clustered together overlooking the water. It does make for a beautiful sight, but try taking a nice photo in a sea of tourists trying to do the same thing.
There was a main pedestrian street which had most of the restaurants and souvenir shops, but as you walk further into Oia, the streets get narrower. When you walk out into the exposed alleys, see the landscape of the Greek islands. and realize you are in a place where many people can only dream of going, it is a humbling feeling.
After Oia, our guides dropped us in the main city of Fira, which signaled the end of our tour. This place was even busier than Oia because we were in the late afternoon and everyone was trying to get back down the mountain, get to their tender boats, and onto their cruise ships. This was where the chaos began. We walked through the narrow streets full with people to get to the cable car. Little did we know that the cable car line was hundreds of people long for a cable car that only carried maybe 30-40 people for every 5 min ride.
I knew that if we stayed in the cable car line, we would not have been able to reach our cruise ship and the cruise ship would leave us. Luckily, there was a mountain path that would take us from the town of Fira to the old harbor where our tender boats were waiting. A quick Google Maps check showed me that it would be a 20-30 min walk, so we decided to take the mountain path. At least we were walking down rather than walking up.
I wish I took pictures during this walk, but we were more worried about getting to our tender than anything else. At the top of the path were about 20 donkeys with people offering donkey rides down the path for about 10 euros. All of these donkeys clogged the walkway to the point where we were walking through a sea of donkeys and having to push their heads out of the way so we could cross. The overpowering smell is what you would expect when you walk through a drove of donkeys, so I will not describe it here.
We continued walking our exhausted selves down the uneven mountain path. Some of the rocks on this path were quite slippery, and I nearly slipped a few times. We also had to avoid the occasional donkey and also avoid stepping in numerous piles of donkey shit. After maybe half an hour, we reached the bottom of the path and made it to our tender boat to take us to our cruise ship.
Celebrity Cruises had a stall outside the line to the tender boats with refreshments of flavoured water and cold towels. I have to tell you, the three cups of water and the cold towel to my neck was the best feeling of my life after walking one of the most harrowing paths since walking up Diamond Head in Hawaii.
What did I think about my trip to Santorini? Santorini is one of those bucket-list places that you have to go see once in your life. Other than that, I thought the trip was reasonably good. The only thing really special about Santorini is the architecture and the overall views of the towns and the bay. Santorini is not mind-blowing by any stretch, maybe even slightly overrated, but I am still happy that I got to visit the island.
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