We had a relaxing day at sea yesterday. We have been continuing to explore the Sun Princess and enjoy relaxing on this cruise. One of the new features of the Sun is a forward area called the Sea View Terrace. If you have ever taken a cruise, you know that people are always looking for ways to see where the ship is traveling. We spent a few hours on the terrace and just watched the waves and a few other ships in the distance.
There was an opportunity the learn the spoons. The Irish music duo, Rambling Rovers, taught 85+ of us how to play the spoons. Two of the tunes they used were Irish Washerwoman, a jig, and John Ryan’s Polka. Lots of fun and it was very noisy. We went back to the pub and sat with some folks from Northern California to watch the Rambling Rovers. Also watched them after dinner.
We arrived in the harbor of Santorini early this morning. We were scheduled to start the tendering operation at 7 AM, but the Greek Coast Guard held this up even though the Sun was using local tenders and their barge docks for the ship to tender transfer. I suspect this was because the Sun had not visited Santorini before. People finally started to go ashore at about 9:30 and this ended up creating a large crowd trying to get up the relatively small gondola to the village of Fira at the top of the rim.
Village of Fira showing a small portion of the donkey path to the top.
When we got ashore, there was a very long line and we decided to have lunch at the Taverna at the port and do a little shopping at the port rather than try to get up to the village. Lunch was wonderful, we shared a Greek salad and Linda had Musaka and I had mussels along with some nice white Greek wine.
The line for the gondola (It want a long way behind us as well) from our lunch table
Lunch with a birds-eye view of the line
Open fire roasting of meats at the Taverna
We got back to the ship after a little shopping and we are looking forward to our self-guided tour of the Ephesus in Turkey tomorrow.