Santorini

Knowing absolutely nothing about Santorini, I was expecting it to be another Mykonos, but the similarities between the two extend no further than cute whitewashed houses and Greek Orthodoxy. The main town of Mykonos is nestled within gentle hills on the waterfront. By contrast, Santorini’s main town, Fira, is perched at the peak of one of its highest cliffs, with the waterfront only accessible by cablecar, a very, very long stair climb, or by the island’s famous donkeys, who do your climbing for you.

Or you can drive up from the opposite side of the island, where the airport is, but in true cruise style, they choose drama over practicality.

Fira itself is much like any other Greek island town, or indeed, much like any small town whose income is based entirely on tourism. There are the same jewellry shops, the same clothing stores, the same gelati stands, the same souvenir stalls selling novelty penis-shaped bottle openers, all with owners making imprecations to tourists in broken English. If it was insufferably humid and the hawkers and touts had a slightly different skin colour, it could just as easily be Phuket as Santorini.

But the ship was only docked for a few hours, so there wasn’t too much time to explore the tea towels and sunglasses in the market. It made more sense for Benny and me to walk along the paths on the clifftops, taking photos and fighting down the vertigo.

At least Benny got a Hallelujah Selfie.

Then all too soon, it was back down the several hundred metres of donkey poop-strewn stairs to join the queues for the shuttle boats to go back to the ship. Very, very long queues… it takes a while to process two and a half thousand passengers through one ship security checkpoint: two hours of my seven hour stop were taken up with me standing in queues.

But then like I said, this cruise line tends to choose drama over practicality. What can I say; they’re Italians.