This was our last day on the boat. Dave and I slept in til 8:30 (after being up at 6 every other day, this was SUCH a treat.) and managed to miss breakfast completely. We were docked in Crete, at Heraklion (Iraklion, if you ask the Greeks) and we didn't have anything booked. By the time we got ourselves up and moving, we only had about an hour and a half to head into town. Our only mission was to find the internet cafe and send a couple emails, and find something to eat.
There isn't much in terms of quicky food in most of Greece, and I downright refuse to eat american fast food while in a country with it's own fantastic cuisine, so eventually we found a coffee shop that had some croissants. I got a delicious chocolate croissant and I don't remember what Dave got. We went to the internet place and then turned back towards the boat.
Our next stop was Santorini, which we had heard from Christian was beautiful. We arrived there early in the day. We had a tour booked to take us to Oia, (Eee-ya) which is where most of the pictures you see of Greece are taken. It's the home of the multiple blue domed churches and white washed buildings. It was absolutely gorgeous. I took a billion pictures, almost all of which look like the many postcards you could buy.
After the tour to Oia, we went back to Thira (Fira to the Greeks) where we didnt' have nearly as much time as we would have liked. The city itself is built WAY up on the top of the island, away from the port to protect themselves from pirates. If you were to walk up to the city, you'd be going up 588 steps, all of which are about 3 feet long and on a bit of a slope, covered in donkey crap and made of cobble stones that have been worn smooth and slippery over the many years. To get down we had a couple of options. We could go down by foot (no thanks), by cable car (meh) or by donkey. Guess which I picked, much to Dave's chagrin. Hehee. We'd been warned by the older lady on our boat to not take the donkeys down the hill, but our own Contiki tour guides told us it was fun and to do it. I know Dave would have MUCH rather taken the cable car, but I was dead set on the donkey.
It was the most hilarious thing I have done. Being competant with horseback riding, it wasnt really all that scary at all. The worst part was the fact that we didn't have anything but a loop at the top of the saddle to hold onto. No reins or anything like that. The donkeys just knew to go down the hill, and they did that regardless of who or what was in their way. That includes people and other donkeys. My donkey liked to be at the front of the pack and would bite any one who got in his way.
Once safely down the mountain, amazed at the sure-footedness of the animals, we got back on a little boat and went back to the ship. Most of our group had gone to do a different excursion that involved trekking up an active volcano and swimming in a sulpher pool. That one sounded really exciting too, but I really was tired of hiking up hills in the heat and wanted to get some good pictures to take home. We showered, changed and got ready for dinner.
We went to the restaurant again but this time we were just seated wherever. We ended up at a table with all americans. That wasn't much fun at all. It was two older couples, somehow all of them were all teachers, and they were just so.... american. Dinner conversation went from stuff about travel and school and such to people being executed and other depressing topics such as. Dave and I got out of there soon after we were finished dinner.
Our group decided to have a toga party that night, as it was our last night on the ship. We went back to our room and got ourselves all toga-ed up. After dressing we went to the disco and met up with the rest of the group. The night was a lot of fun, and we were up til at least 2am. We had to meet up with the group at 7am in the lounge, which wasn't enjoyable, and so not much sleep happened.
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