Santorini and Mykonos - Gems of the Greek Islands

Santorini and Mykonos

hiking up the donkey road in Santorini

Ahhh, beautiful Greece. There is a special color for the water in Greece. Azure doesn’t cut it. Turquoise, cobalt, sapphire, cerulean…. No, the best I can say is it is Greek water.

We are anchored in Santorini and getting ready to take a small boat ashore to this old volcanic island. Clara joins us today but Juliet begged us to stay onboard, so we are a family of five at the moment.

Santorini, the southernmost gem of the Cyclades island chain, awash in the Aegean Sea. Once a thriving Bronze Age port, a vital part of the Minoan civilization, the island literally blew apart in a cataclysmic volcanic eruption 3600 hundred years ago and is now merely a shell of an island with a huge sea caldera, big enough for our gigantic ship (and many others) to all anchor in. The eruption, one of the largest in earth’s history, ended not only the civilization on the island but also the entire Minoan civilization - gave rise to the legend of Atlantis.

Looking down from the top of Santorini into the Sea filled Caldera

Pretty exciting stuff, especially for this traveling family.

Again, as we don’t have much time we won’t be able to see the ruins of the town that survived or explore for the underwater ruins that are out there somewhere. (Atlantis, I’ve found it!) But we will climb to the top of the cliffs, see the main town, soak in a little island life and look down into the caldera proper.

gyros heaven

As the tourists line up for the funicular (like a quick cable car) and the rest queue to buy a donkey ride we decide to hoof it up the steep slope ourselves. We hike the mount all the time at home so no sweat, well, some sweat, we can make it. And so we hike up the something like 500+ steps  to the top of the caldera rim.
We are constantly being passed by donkeys, carrying scared looking tourists, clutching their Dior bags and point-and-shoot cameras. Apart from dodging the Donkey dung it felt good to get physical, especially for me after the few weeks of sickness I’ve had. And with every bend in the road the scene gets more and more magnificent.

The view from the top must be one of the best in the world. Fira town perches precariously to the top of the volcanic rim. It has been photographed something like a billion times, and everyone has seen the quintessential white houses looking down onto the blue water. But you know what? It deserves to be photographed like mad and celebrated. It’s a truly amazingly beautiful place!

A fishy pedicure!

So we take our photographs and spend time pointing out the caldera to the kids - how we are standing on the rim of the volcano that exploded so many years ago, and how there is a new island rising in the middle of the water, someday to blow up again – but hopefully not for another 10,000 years or so!

Who needs laughter yoga?

Not far into the town we ran across a foot spa store that is entirely unique to us. I must try this out! There are rows of plush seats with water tanks to put your feet in. The water tanks look like aquariums, because, well, they are aquariums. Each foot bath has a hundred little cleaner fish and when you stick your feet inside they come and eagerly start nibbling at your toes, eating away any dead skin and fungus. It is supposed to be relaxing, but being ticklish, I nearly made myself sick laughing then entire 20 minutes. Each time I would subdue the giggles another little wiggly body would push between my toes and start munching away, and I would break out into another fit of laughter. Who needs laughter yoga when you can laugh silly and get the dead skin taken off your feet?

finally on a donkey

The kids thought I was mad, but all had a go at getting their feet cleaned as well. What a fun experience, and my feet really were smoother when I was done!

The best part was listening to our budding entrepreneurs deciding on their business plan of importing the fish to Mount Maunganui and setting up their own fish foot cleaning business. Liana deemed Clara suitable for charming the customers in, while Liam was relegated to cleaning the fish tanks. Who knows, they may make their fortunes in the fish pedicure market someday!

Fearless daddy leads the way

Fira, is a small town and soon we had exhausted the stores. So we settled for a gyros (just as drippy, slurpy, greasy and yummy as yesterday) and a bottle of water before heading to find some last views. Our limited time only allowed me to have a quick espresso before navigating our way to the top of the trailhead that leads down to the marina 500 meters below.

The kids, who had wanted so badly to ride a donkey on the way up, got their wish on the way down. After some serious haggling the Greek man saddled up two donkeys, hoisted the kids up, handed the reigns over to Randall and walked away. We were on our own, so how to make a tired donkey move? It was a bumpy laughter filled ride down, but we made it just in time for the last tender back to the ship before it steamed off to the second island for the day. Ah, what an experience.

MYKONOS

Arriving in Mykonos just after seven there was never any doubt in our minds that the kids were going to be left on the ship in the kids club while mummy and daddy went out on the town.

Oh to be so free. Just the two of us on a quaint, if tourist ridden, Greek island. The only hands we held were each other’s. The town is made for casual strolling in and the sights are laid back and low key. Mykonos doesn’t have any significant historical sights (at least not that we could see in the few hours that we were docked here) so we had full permission to relax and just be the silly tourists that we sometimes make fun of.

Working up our appetites with a stroll to some of the traditional Grecian windmills we had severe decision trauma choosing a restaurant, but when a table presented itself right on the water the decision became very easy. The view was stunning, the food amazing. The wine went down effortlessly and the company was perfect. Who knew it was so easy to hold a conversation when you are not constantly peppered with questions from the small inquisitive people that follow up everywhere?

walking through the streets of mykonos

A perfect evening to recharge our energies before the excitement and history of our next stop – Athens!!!