Of Lenses and Moose: Santorini

Our second shore day was at Santorini. The Captain announced the day before that it was a very spectacular entry into the caldera, but as it would be before 7am I decided that after Norway and the fjords I for one was unlikely to be impressed. So I stayed in bed. Think Sarah may have seen a bit more than me. I woke for room service breakfast, and we dressed and ate in between wandering to and fro on the balcony for photos as the sun just peeped above the top of the crater. We were at the shallowest part of the caldera, around 40m, and had dropped anchor. Due to the currents the thrusters still had to go repeatedly to keep the Elizabeth in position. The other 3 ships in that day all kept their distance by use of thrusters only.

Sitting on the lip of the crater is Fira, the chief town of Santorini. The tenders would bring us back to the ship from Old Fira Port at the foot of the zig zag. However, for those of us on ship tours we landed at the small port of Athinios a few miles to the right. This port is also at the foot of a long zig zag, but in this case it is a road not a path, so we can all be loaded into coaches. So it was all aboard the Skylark (or at least the Santorini tenders - not allowed to use the ship's own here) and off we went.

We had a nice drive across the Island, to reach Akrotiri. This is one of the most amazing archaeological sites in the world, where they have discovered and started digging up one of the cities that was destroyed when Santorini (known as Thira) blew it's top. As they had received warning (earthquakes) the place was practically deserted. The civilisation here was Minoan, and from the debris on Crete (Knossos) it has been realised that the eruption that destroyed Santorini also destroyed the civilisation on Crete. It would have created a huge tsunami as well as sending huge quantities of hot ash over the region. (The caldera has a surface two and a half times, with a volume five times, greater than that of Krakatoa.) This theory was first proposed in the 1930s. Excavations at Akrotiri started in the 1960s, and eventually backed it up. In 2012 they reopened the site under a huge roofed area. It is climate controlled and monitored from Athens 24/7. Akrotiri was a Bronze Age settlement, with the eruption occurring around 1500BC - a very early Greek "Pompeii".

It was a big place

No King they think. The Admin building was 3 floors high, 14 rooms per floor!

1500BC? They could certainly engineer beautiful walls by then

We're standing at 3rd floor height

Ground floor had just 1 decent window by door, then v small ones to help keep goods cool

They found loads of pots. They stuck some back together and left them on the site for context

The main road

Those pots are up on the 1st floor

View across the upper floor - far corner is the loo!

The loo, with yellow wall plaster. There was a small wall partitioning it off

Collapsed stairway

Looking to the upper floor - we were walking through the ancient street!

Monitoring for crack growth - piece of glass held by plaster

Casts of beds put out to air

Clay box in the floor of a house - a gold bull was found in it, old even then, they think left to protect the house

And I had to put up with it all day!!

Paved floors

From Akrotiri we drove to the highest point on the island, the Mount of Elijah. A lovely drive across the Island, and then great views over it.

There are little Churches everywhere

The modern town of Akrotiri

Vines - the grow 42 varieties of grape I think. They never water them - fogs at night soak into the soil

Mount of Elijah with Convent of St.Nicolas on top

Santorini tomatoes - very small

Santorini is far larger than we had realised

FAR larger!

The caldera to the left, with Fira sort of centre stage on the rim

The ring marks the excavations of Akrotiri

From the Mount of Elijah we drove to Fira. Our guide walked us up into the centre and gave us a few basic directional pointers - and that was that. We were given tickets for the cable car that could take us down to the tenders, or we could walk down the zig zag. First we headed for a little souvenir shopping - where I discovered to my horror that while helping Sarah decide to carry more of the euros today, I then carefully forgot to pick my wallet up. With the only credit card we planned on using (as it doesn't have fees for non-sterling transactions). Disaster. Souvenir shopping was considerably more limited than we had planned, and then we went looking for lunch. Found one of the little restaurants hanging out over the rim, and counted our euros out very carefully. We managed some Santorini specialities - fava bean stew, tomato fritters and Santorini salad (very like an ordinary Greek salad but with added extras like sun dried tomatoes and a couple of dolmades thrown in for good measure). And had just enough for an ouzo each. Yummy.

Spot the moon!

The Queen Elizabeth in the caldera

THE traditional view of Santorini

Ouzo!

Tomato fritters

Santorini salad and fava bean stew

After that we decided to skip the long queue for the cable car and take our time going down - thought there would probably be some excellent views as we went. It was a good walk - though a mega queue at the other end anyway for a tender back to the ship. But they gave us chilled towels and nice iced water (with lemon in) to keep us cool while we waited, very civilised! And very picturesque.....