Good Ports of Call

The ship tenders in Santorini. It takes two hours to get off and then you stand two hours in the broiling sun for a cable car to the top of the mountain. This leaves one with very little time to explore anything except the usual and customary collection of souvenir shops in the port. We did rent a car -- our comany stood us up, but we found one through Tony's Car Rental -- very nice people -- and drove part of the coast. Four cruise ships were in port that day and we were told to avoid Thira as it would be a mad house -- we took the opposite direction. We tripped across a tiny Santorini village and had lunch by the sea in a family taverna as locals brought in small catches. This was heaven. The rest of Santorini is vastly overrated in our opinion. I would not stand in line for the cable cars just to see the port. FYI, Royal Caribbean did a very poor job of communicating this in advance, which makes planning difficult.

Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey