Beautiful Santorini Cruise Excursion: Highlight of Greek Isles Cruise
In this post, we’re going to tell you about our trip to beautiful Santorini, Greece. This visit was during our Greek Isles cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas.
We will share what we loved about Santorini and what we disliked, and we will leave you with a link to our YouTube video if you’d like a bit of a deeper dive.
The first thing to share is that Santorini is an island with a relatively small port. It’s also important to recognize that the nearest town to the port sits high atop a cliff at the water’s edge.
To reach the town, you first have to take a tender. If you’ve never tendered, that’s what happens when the ship can’t dock right at the port and has to moor itself out in deep water, where smaller ships take and back and forth to the shoreline. I works fine in most cases but this day in Santorini it was a mess. You see the only way to explore Santorini and the village of Oia is to travel up that steep cliff. Three options: take the tram, walk up a steep path, or ride donkeys. We chose the tram and it tool forever.
Fortunately, the company we booked our excursion through waited for us and another couple stuck in the long line. First tip: If you book an excursion go through your cruise line, because you get front of the line privileges. Or ride the donkeys…
The wait and the struggles to arrive on time were worth the effort because Santorini is simply gorgeous. The island is volcanic, and from the top you can clearly see the size of the original huge volcano, but you won’t be looking at that for long as your view will quickly shift over to the beautiful whitewashed buildings that dot the cliffside.
The famous blue domed roofs each signify the site of a church. There are literally hundreds in Santorini and they are truly majestic. Some are only open one day a year in honor of their patron saints!
Walking through the towns, you travel through quaint walkways. The paths are very narrow and packed with cool cafes and shops. And, they’re all right along the water, so the views are stunning. EVERYWHERE!
The area was packed with tourist when our ship was there, and I imagine it could get uncomfortably crowded if multiple ships were in the port.
We also ate while we were there, and Bob had the best Gyro ever. All of the grub was good and we enjoyed the local beer while sitting on the waterfront. Wonderful!
To get a little deeper insight into the trip, check out our video below.