The next stop on the Celebrity Infinity voyage was the island of Santorini in Greece. I know Santorini is generally one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe with its blue and white buildings, but now I get the chance to go to the island myself and see if this place is worth the hype. Little did I know that Santorini would be one of the most chaotic days of my vacation, especially towards the end of the day.
There are many things to show from this day, so I will split this day into two blog posts. This post is part one of my day in Santorini.
As the cruise ship sailed closer to the island of Santorini, we can see the rocky, eroded coastline that formed the island's edges. Chiseled into the rock themselves were some buildings, which I thought looked like some cool architecture.
We took a tender boat from the cruise ship to the main port (where there was a cable car that took you to the top of the hill and back down, more on that later), and from there we took another tender boat to a less busy port on the island, where we met our tour guides and drivers with two big buses.
The bus drove us on some precarious roads up the hill and we were on our way to the first stop of the tour, which was the Prophet Elias Monastery. The Prophet Elias Monastery is the highest point in Santorini.
Now, we could not actually enter the monastery itself because it is a religious site closed to the public, but below the entrance was a lookout stop with a view where you can see the entire top half of Santorini. The view itself was nice, but the land looked so barren. Is this the result of climate change? I know we visited this island just after a time where there were several wildfires in many of the Greek islands. Did this affect Santorini as well? Regardless, to see the bleakness of the land around me was a bit depressing.
We visited the village of Pyrgos for some free time. There was not much to do other than walk around the village (mostly walking up steps) and taking pictures of the area. There were a few donkeys galloping around the streets, which I am guessing are responsible for moving things up steps where cars and motorbikes cannot reach. I visited some souvenir shops to look at overpriced merchandise, as per usual.
We stopped at the local beach of Perivolos on the southeast of Santorini for lunch and a swim. I forgot to take a picture of my food, but the prawn linguine was decent. The beach itself was fine. We got our own beach loungers and umbrellas, but the water was somewhat rough, with strong waves knocking us around. Thankfully, the water was nowhere near as rough as the black sand beach in Maui.
I will continue talking about my day in Santorini in a second blog post. Until then, please enjoy some more pictures/videos.
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