This is definitely cruise ship season here in Santorini.  There were three in this morning and one more joined them later in the day – that’s about 6 – 8 thousand extra people per day in the little town.

The passengers get tendered across to the old port where they can choose to ride up the funicular, tackle the stairs – all 584 of them or they can ride up on a donkey.

These poor donkeys must have a hell of a life trudging up and down these stone stairs carrying tourists in the searing heat.

My feeling is that this poster of the happy donkey from Shrek is not a true depiction of the real donkey’s feelings about their job – especially for 6 euros that they’ll never get to spend!

We headed up the coast a bit more today.  We decided we’d walk as far as we felt like it and then turn around, taking in the lovely sights…

and the lovely gardens…

We got about half way to Oia and stopped for lunch here

Then we turned around and made out back along the Caldera Walk… We justified that walking half way to Oia and then back again was akin to walking the whole way there…. it’s simple maths.

This cat was clearly not happy with his lunch and was waiting to speak to the manager.  He sat there like that without moving, even when I tried to talk to him.

She was pretty windy in Santorini today, which helped us up the steps gust by gust.

Just at the top of our hill was this restaurant – we’d read in “Secret Santorini” that is was pretty good, then we told our new best friend at the front desk who screwed her face up at the mention of the name and tried politely to encourage us in a different direction… but we persisted and went there anyway.

We blew in – literally and were ushered upstairs for a better view.  All the tables except one were in the full sun so we asked to sit at the table in the shade…. this was obviously an issue for the 4 bored, scruffy looking gents standing around with nothing to do.

The main guy said – “No you sit here.”

We replied, “We’d rather sit here though.”

He sighed and although I couldn’t see his face as he’d turned away from us, I just know he rolled his eyes.

We sat where we wanted to and the table was dusty and the bench seats were all ripped. They begrudgingly took the plates and cutlery away leaving only one glass on the table.  It was at this point that I remembered I’d eaten there on my last visit to Santorini and remembered having a lovely meal – I remember Madeline going on and on about how good the tomatoes were – they really were good though, so can’t blame her.

We waited a good 5-10 minutes where nobody offered us a drink or to wipe the table or to have anything to do with us.  They were just standing there waiting for something to happen.

So it was decided that Santorini was full of restaurants, so why should we waste our time and money here…..

Move forward 4 more minutes and we were sitting in Ouzeo, had ordered and were downing a cold one!

A lovely dinner was had and then we walked back to the cliff to witness this gorgeous ‘second’ sunset – the beautiful colours that come up after the sun has gone down.

Lovely ladies with a lovely sunset

Then we rushed home to witness more of the sunset before it disappeared.

And we wished our lovely neighbours goodnight.