Day 4 – Heraklion and Santorini

Crete

We docked at Heraklion, Crete and disembarked to tour the Heraklion Museum. This archaeological museum featured artifacts discovered around Crete. Many artifacts were Minoan in origin, dating back to 2000 BC. Some of these items are very impressive considering how long ago they were crafted.

Following the museum, we walked down to a fountain in a square that featured lion heads in stone. From there, a small park where John Salvesen, our former pastor, presented a devotional based on Paul’s letter to Titus. Titus lived and served on Crete, and Paul encouraged him to keep the faith and keep preaching the Gospel. Following this devotional, we were given free time, and we walked down another street to see the Cathedral of St. Titus.

Walking past the cathedral, we could see the shop-lined street that led down to the Aegean. We did some shopping, then made our way back to the bus that took us back to the ship.

We departed Crete to head to Santorini.

Santorini

This part of the trip took about 4 hours to go about 67 nautical miles. When approaching Santorini, it looks like an island fortress. The port is small, and the road snakes up the cliff side with many switchbacks. We saw several buses winding their way up as we boarded the tender to take us to the port.

Our guide for Santorini was a young woman named Aphrodite (who said her father’s name was Hercules). Aphrodite is the woman in black. Kari, the woman in the pink pants, was our tour director while we were on the ship.

As the driver made his way up the cliff, Aphrodite gave us a lesson about the history of Santorini, probably to distract us from the treacherous drive we were on! There are three volcanoes, one inactive, one active in the harbor, and one active on the other side of the island that’s under the water and releases gases from time to time.

Santorini has several villages around the island. The bus stopped at one of the villages after we got over the top of the cliff where we could get out and see a typical Santorini village.

Aphrodite continued to regale us with stories of Santorini on the way to our final stop. We were headed for the most well-known village, Oia Village (pronounced “Ee-Ya”), where the famous blue-domed, white buildings are. Getting to the spot where you can actually see the domes all in one shot is next to impossible, as there’s a long line and people take their time looking at it them and taking pictures.

We did some souvenir shopping, and then stopped at several places to take pictures.

We stopped at a place Aphrodite told us had the best gelato. It was the finest gelato I’ve ever had. Admittedly, it’s also the first gelato I’ve ever had. But as ice cream goes, it was really good!