Santorini: Profitis Ilias & Oia Village

Of all the times I’ve been to Santorini, I’ve truly never left the local area of Fira. I’ve taken the cable car up to the top, shopped around and come back down. To be completely honest, I didn’t know how much more there was to Santorini. Today, I took an excursion entitled “Profitis Ilias and Oia Village.”
Profitis Ilias was a location where the busses stopped and we were able to get a fantastic panoramic view of the entire island of Santorini. Despite the fog, everybody took several photos of the island. Like I mentioned before, I didn’t realize how much there was to the island – it’s quite large and on the opposite side of where the tenders drop off the guests, it’s actually quite flat as well.

The main attraction of the tour is Oia (EE-YA) Village. Oia is probably one of the most photographed locations in the world. People from all over the world, come to Greece and want to see the famous white houses with the blue cupolas that Santorini is so well known for, which are located in Oia. In Oia, the guide showed us the best location to take photos and then gave us free time to walk around and shop in the village. Truly, aside from the photographic aspect of the village, it’s just another typical Greek town with the same souvenirs, cafes and shops that every other town has. It was nice to finally see it, though.

 

The bus brought us back to Fira (on top of the mountain, in front of the ship). Because of the narrow streets and uneven terrain, the bus cannot drive us all the way to the cable car pickup and we all had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the cable car station (one of three ways to get down the mountain aside from the donkey ride or walking almost 600 steps down). Our group separated from the guide where they were given free time to shop around Fira or take the cable car back down to the ship. I walked them through the town to the cable car station, but one gentleman from a jewelry store stopped us to let me know that the entire island had no power and the cable car is not operating. When I asked what caused it, he just told me that the power plant had a major explosion and the island has no power without any promise of when it would be back on. My mind starts racing and I let the guests know what’s going on and tell them to find a restaurant to grab lunch or a drink and keep our fingers crossed that the power will come back on.

I left the guests and literally ran down the donkey trail – almost 600 steps down a mountain (HUGE steps) and very slippery! It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to walk down and I made it in 30 minutes, dodging donkeys and donkey droppings. I was hopeful that I’d find out what was going on, but unfortunately no more information was waiting for me at the bottom. Luckily, our staff was on the ball and arranged buses for anybody stuck at the top, but with 2 ships in port, it’s close to impossible to communicate that we’ve arranged alternate transportation to get them back to the ship. We had lots of upset folks that day. Because we tend to have many elderly onboard with us, they struggled to walk down the trail not knowing of the options available. Our staff was at the cable car station directing folks to the buses, but when you have 7,000 people on a small island – there’s just no way to spread the word.

The day ended at my favorite restaurant at the very end of the pier, Georgio’s. Keep in mind, there was no power on the entire island, but they continued to cook their incredible food in the dark on the gas grills. With all the craziness of the day, I can’t complain because it ended with my favorite Greek Foods – Greek Salad and Tzatziki!