We have local TV (all Greek to me) and the luxury of Satellite TV ……… 500 channels !!!, of which there are only broadcasts on 300 channels when I flicked thru them, of which 30% are “Adult only”, and only 9 english ones, made up of 6 American religious channels .. a few cartoon channels, and that leaves BBC World news as the only watchable channel, which repeats every half hour… so becomes boring quite quickly… back to just reading books and gazing on the vista….
We do have “The Goodies DVD” with us for emergencies. We did find on satellite TV the Gilmore Girls dubbed in German which made interesting watching (for 5 minutes).
So far we had driven around the island, and walked around directly near our villa. Tues & Wed nights we walked more into the main town of Fira, and found lots of tourist shops, restaurants & people, and the life of Santorini…. This is why people come, not for the baron landscapes, … they come to shop, sit in restaurants, shop, shop and more shopping and exploring all the narrow laneways (smelling of donkey urine) and of course looking at the magic sunsets, and the villas at dusk… and the cruise ships..
Wednesday we saw the impact of Cruise ships on this town …. We awoke to the sight of several large ships anchored in the bay…. our walk for the morning was going to be down the 588 steps to the old port to wander around, and then take the cable car (or donkey’s) back up to the top.
Since Liz’s ankle was sore, we opted to take the ride on the cable car down, at 11am we entered straight into the small cable car, and rode the 60 second ride to the bottom….then there they were… thousands (well hundreds) of people off the boats, all lined up on the pier waiting for the ride on the cable car to the top, to the shops… the queue was easily 100m long…
the cable car took 36 people every 2 minutes, so we sat in a café on the pier, soaked up the atmosphere, and waited and by 12:30pm, the queue was much shorter… and so we took the return ride up (we opted not to take a donkey ride up the 588 steps!!).
At the top, the return queue (100m) of all the cruise boat tourists had formed already… I think the cruise boats send people in groups, each allowed a few hours on shore, with strict times to return (all had numbered stickers on their shirts of the time to return).
So we escaped the crowd around the shops, and returned to our peaceful Villa for a siesta & then mid afternoon, we joined all the other Aussies in the pool (at least 4 other couples).
We got talking to a group of three sister-in-laws from Melbourne who arrived this afternoon, and who were in shock over what they had seen of the island so far (just like we did) .. especially when Santorini was touted as the best island in the infamous Greek Islands. We all felt Australia was a much better place for a sun kissed holiday. It was good to know that we weren’t the only ones feeling a little disappointed with the Greek Is experience. The views of the other Aussies at the pool all mentioned Myconos (our next stop) was a much better Island, and much more picturesque. .. we shall see on Thursday
Another night in a restaurant overlooking the wonderful sunset (still only a average meal and not at all cheap), and a great dessert of Baklava !!
We took our 4 hour jetcat ride to Myconos, detouring via a few islands on the way to set down pictures … all appeared similar to what we had seen and experienced on Santorini. We arrived the Myconos port, and were thankful for our tour guides to welcome us (amidst all the local hotel hawkers), and arrange transfer to our hotel .. another hair-raising bus ride, albeit if it was only 10 minutes long.
The hotel was very nice, large well appointed room, with a lovely view, if you do not look down. Unfortunately there is major building work along the edge of the bay, directly in front of the hotel (reclaiming more land I think), hence distracts from the vista, plus lots of truck noise..
The weather is humid, and overcast (hazy or smog??) & flying ants…. so this does not help. This was similar to the quarry beside our hotel in Santorini.
The lack of visible vegetation on the Island (hence baron looking again) was disappointing compared to our expectations. We have 2 days here, before we return to Athens … not sure what we are going to here…. beside vege out??
There is one ancient island of Delos, the birth place of Apollo, which we may visit, …. we don’t have high expectations, based on past experience.
