Santorini – a beautiful place over-run by tourists?

Continuing my series of stories of the ports we visited on the Viking Empires of the Mediterranean cruise in 2019, we come to Santorini – what is often pictured as a jewel in the Mediterranean. We were thrilled that this was going to be on the itinerary as there is talk of stopping cruise ships from landing there, and so I was up early and ready to see the island appear on the horizon.

There are no deep-water ports and so all cruise ships anchor in the bay by the ancient volcano and are met by small boats that ferry them to Skala from where coaches take the visitors around the island and finally to the town of Fira, the scenic cliff face town that is famous around the world.

The town of Fira is certainly beautiful, but oh so busy with people! The streets are narrow and winding, and the viewpoints to see the famous views are relatively few and far between, and so the tourists trail one after the other in long queues of people to get to the more interesting parts and past the tourist shops! Do I sound a little jaded? Yes, I’m afraid I was! Even the church roofs have signs on them telling people to take their selfies somewhere else! Even here you can see a little posing going on!

I did manage to find some views without people though! Mainly by looking up at beautiful churches in the village:

Incidentally, that little island with the boat that you can see between the windows is itself a church:

I also found an interesting old wooden spinning wheel on the top of one building (put there for photographs I would think!!)

Of course, there are many beautiful hotels and villas built into the cliff face here:

But, I asked myself, how do you get your luggage down all those steps to your hotel room? Well, of course, someone carries them!

And how does the village remain so clean and white with all these visitors passing along the street?

I did take a walk along the cliff towards the next village of Oia, I believe, and pretty rapidly lost the crowds. I didn’t have time to get all the way there, but I can imagine if you were actually staying here, it would be pretty fantastic in the early morning and evenings when most of the visitors are back on their cruise ships! That is when the spectacular photos are taken with the sun setting over the ocean! Here is the view back towards Fira from the cliff top walk:

And with that I walked back to the cable car (and queued up for 30 minutes) to get back down the dock from where I sailed back to the Viking Star to continue the cruise onto Olympia, the home of the Olympic Games. You can read that story here.

I normally link to the photos in my online portfolio where you can choose images to decorate your home or relive your memories. To be honest, I wasn’t really pleased with any of the images taken on this day, but if something here really strikes a chord with you, please contact me and I will make sure it is made available!

You can see all my images with free shipping and a 30 day money back guarantee here in my Pictorem portfolio.