Day 5 (Day 21)
Our ferry departed pretty close to time - it was both a relief and also exciting to actually be on the move finally, knowing we were now edging closer to Santorini. Since there was a whole port full of ferries heading out almost all at once now the strike was over, we joined a convoy of ferries exiting Piraeus Harbour. We got to know our neighbours - he is a surgeon who has a Clinic every 2nd month, she retired but ended up going back to work as his secretary at the clinic, and on the non-clinic months they try and travel. They too were going to Santorini, but unlike us today was always their intended day to travel - they had no idea that there had been a strike and had wondered why the boat was so full. The journey to Santorini was roughly 7 hours, with the ferry calling in at Paros, Naxos, and Ios on the way. We were going to Paros after Santorini so it was interesting to get a glimpse of the island on the way to Santorini; Naxos was an island we considered instead of Paros or as well as Paros, but just went with Paros in the end; and Ios looked sparsely inhabited. The only real other things of note about the ferry ride was we spent a lot of the time working on blogs or photos, lots of big groups of children kept roaming the boat looking for places they could all sit together (with no luck, of course) and roughly every 10 minutes there was an announcement (preceeded by a notification noise that sounded a lot like the first few bars from the song "Evacuate the Dancefloor" which would tell us that the Goodies Restaurant was now open, Enjoy your Meal. This reminded me a lot of that irritating message Dion and I kept hearing on the overnight Croatia to Italy ferry and this was no less annoying. Goodies is a Greek Fast Food Burger chain and Sasha and I had always planned on getting it on the ferry to try it and to save us the hassle of having to find a supermarket prior to the ferry trip. It was reasonably tasty but nothing amazing.
Day 6 (Day 22)
Day 7 (Day 23)
Day 8 (Day 24)
What then happened in the ferry terminal is a story in itself! We hop off the bus, half the people go to nearby cafe's etc for lunch, we head straight for the boarding gate area. We're early, we know that but already the boarding gate area (undercover) is fairly full of people - mostly asian tour groups and especially large groups of schoolchildren and their minders. So we join the end of this fairly wide line, find one group of kids piling their bags in a huge pile next to us and then after a while there is pushing from behind - people trying to get forward into gaps which are barely there, most of these people being asian and judging by the writing on their flags or belongings, Chinese. I say flags because there was one guy who had a tour leader-style blue flag, he pushed passed everyone and kept trying to creep forward. This then seemed to be a cue for his group to do the same - only problem was there wasn't much of a gap beyond myself and Sasha to try and move into. This did not deter them at all and at one point, a guy was tapping on Sasha's shoulder trying to point to her to move into a gap that wasn't actually there - there was a bag in that space. I actually recognised this guy - it was the same guy who had rested his camera on Sasha's shoulder the night before, and his pushy wife was right next to him trying to squeeze past already! I guess they weren't from the cruise ship the day before after all. They basically couldn't pass so they didn't in the end but it was getting rather squeezy now. The time came and went when the ferry should arrive - great, it was late. But I have an app for that - I looked up our ship, and found it was about 15mins late which wasn't that bad in the scheme of things! We knew it would appear out the windows soon so got our bags ready and braced ourselves for the surge that would happen when people see the boat - not thinking that people and cars need to get off before we could get on. There was indeed a surge, but this turned out to be a good thing as all the school kids got their bags and everyone was able to move forward. When passengers were able to board, lo and behold the guy with the blue flag was first out of the gate and running for the ramp! This is going to sound a bit "culturally insensitive" and I apologise, but its actually true - people were sent to the ramp in waves so that cars could still access the boat, and when our wave came all the asian passengers were running with their trundler bags. Not Sasha or I though - we just walked with our bags on our backs and in hand, but we beat a lot of the asian passengers to the ramp - our walking strides somehow being quicker than the others with their hurried but not-very-big-stepped running pace! We got on, found the escalators packed so trudged up the stairs, went to the same deck and seating area as last time and found a grand total of no-one on our deck. Seriously? where the hell was everyone in a rush to go to?
We were offered complimentary Ouzo at the end of our dinner - normal Ouzo or a sweet version which has a name starting with S that I forget. We opted for one each so we could try both between us - Ouzo is Ouzo, but the sweet one was definitely the better note to finish on! We didn't stay up much longer that night, we were pretty exhausted.