Yes, although there aren't as many blue topped buildings as you are led to believe in the travel brochures, Santorini is still a sight to behold. The island cliffs were formed as a result of an enormous volcanic eruption which left a clearly defined crater shape with a small volcanic rock island in the middle. The ships docked in the crater.... and there were lots of ships. There were three other cruise ships while we were there and ours was probably the smallest...

We would like to be able to write a detailed blog about our visit to Crete, but it is quite a large island, with the shore excursions providing no appeal and with Heraklion being quite a large city we decided to stay on the ship, sleep in, relax and focus on Santorini which was on the itinerary for the afternoon. The purpose of this Crete entry is to be able to mark it as a map location.

Today was a shore excursion day for us while the ship was docked in Rhodes or Rodos as the Greeks call it. The island has a population of 100,000 with the main industries being tourism and agriculture (primarily olives). Occupation of the island dates back to the 3rd century BC, however in more modern times it came under the Ottoman Empire, then Italian, British immediately following WWII and now Greek rule. The capital city of Rhodes has a well preserved and occ...

After an early morning pickup by Mr young Greek taxi driver we were off to the port of Piraeus which is about 25 minutes from the centre of Athens. We boarded efficiently with the compulsory welcome photo, and settled in. The ship didn't seem to be crowded and we learnt that there were only 700 odd passengers on a ship which could host 1460. This would make for a very pleasant cruise. As this was going to be our final relax before heading home we were determined ...

A seamless trip on the train to Rome's Fumiciano airport and we were off on our 2 hr flight to Athens for one night prior to our Greek Island cruise. We even had pre-arranged transport to our hotel as part of our cruise package and Mr young Greek taxi driver was a little speedy guy who had difficulty staying in the correct lane. Nevertheless he got us to our hotel safely. The airport was updated/built for the 2004 Olympics and it was shiny and new and the road i...