After sleeping soundly, I was awoken at 4am by the thrashing sound of the engines in reverse and was surprised to look out the window and see that we were about to dock in Piraeus. After breakfast, we left our cabin for the last time and had disembarked by 7am.We took a shuttle with the rest of the Insight group to the Divani Caravel and arranged to store out bags there for a couple of hours while we had a last walk through Athens. We called our favourite taxi ...

We arrived in Heraklion, Crete around dawn and after breakfast we took an excursion to the Minoan Palace of Knossos. Unfortunately, we're a bit 'over' guided tours of ancient ruins and found it a bit tiresome. We were back on the boat for lunch and heading off for Santorini. Heraklion looked quite a nice, modern city but there wasn't much to see in the port area.

After the morning excursion on Crete and lunch back on the ship, we spent a bit of time sorting out and repacking our bags to get ready for disembarkation. We sailed into the Caldera of Santorini around 4pm and were excited to be back at our favourite location of the trip.Most of the group took the excursion to Oia, but as we had already been there, we chose to have a more relaxing afternoon. After the mass exodus was complete, we took one of the tenders across...

We docked in Rhodes just after breakfast and we took another excursion to see the sights. It wasn't too bad as it is quite a scenic island. We finished the excursion near the old town and had a really good time walking the streets, sitting in cafes and shopping. It was much better having free time and we bought up lots of souvenirs. It's so much more civilised shopping here than in Turkey. I've resolved not to buy anything non-essential in Turkey...

Patmos was OK but we made the mistake of taking another excursion when we would have preferred some free time. It has a nice harbour and it was interesting to see the ship anchoring. We had to board tenders to get to the island much like Santorini.