Santorini

 I had heard that this island was beautiful - and once I looked up some pictures of the mostly white buildings and a few blue roofs, I knew it would be a place I would fall in love with - and I did!  This was the highlight of the trip for me - seeing this beautiful island and getting to spend some time on it!

Once again, we had to dock out in the sea and use tenders to take us to shore!  The guy who announces who gets to leave first had promised us that we would be FIRST today since we were last the night before - and he was true to his word!  We were on the first boat to shore!  And I loved all the white buildings up on the hill!  The next picture was taken once we got to shore and went up high - it shows how far the tenders had to go to get to the shoreline!

Santorini is one of the most fascinating islands in the Aegean with its rugged, volcanic cliffs topped by brilliant white houses in the town of Thera.  The view from town is spectacular as you look down in the beautiful bay to the still active volcano island only a few miles away!

Our guide walked with us over to a historical spot where we took pictures and then basically we were on our own the rest of the time!

I love the red flowers next to the whitewash buildings!

Yes, it's a LONG ways down!

Here you can see the small harbor below.

I loved the windmills on this island!

One thing Patty and I had talked about was going to an open air restaurant on the sea and having coffee and a bite to eat!  And that's exactly what we did!

The setting was beautiful!!!  We enjoyed fresh bread with jam and strong coffee!  So relaxing!

We discovered this church on our way to a lunch spot (and yes, that's the Greek flag flying in front) so decided to go in!

The church was gorgeous inside!

And right beside the church was this fish, which I had to take a picture of for Glenn!

The view from our lunch spot - we enjoyed 3 different types of dips with pita chips - it was perfect for the two of us and we loved the setting!

Another view of a church and the volcanic island in the distance.

We shopped and shopped - found what we were looking for including sweatshirts!!  It was the perfect place to shop and enjoy all the cute things!

To get back down to the boat deck you had a choice of walking down, riding a donkey down or purchasing a cable car ticket and riding down!!  Which of course is what we chose to do!

Sitting inside - it was a short ride to the bottom with gorgeous views!

We found the boat tenders and got in line - didn't have to wait too long to get on the boat to take us back!  And after dropping our purchases in our cabin, we decided to explore the ship a little more - we had been SO BUSY with tours, etc. that we felt we hadn't gotten to really enjoy the ship!  This was taken on the top deck where the swimming pool and disco were!

That night for dinner, we opted to skip the buffet and go to the nicer restaurant - it was wonderful and we wished we would have went here before!!  A nice menu to order from and great food!

It was our last night on the cruise ship!  And I think all of us were ready to get off onto dry land!