UK and Med Cruise - Day 14 - 18 September - Santorini

And after yesterday, today was an example of a ship's excursion that went really well.  I started off the day feeling less than stellar, and I really felt that it was a bad idea to leave the ship, particularly seeing how hot and humid it was.  However, Santorini was on my bucket list, so I dragged myself along and didn't regret it for a minute.
Our tour started with a trip to 'Ancient Akrotiri' - they don't know what the town was called, so they name it after the current name of the area.  This is just astounding - it's a town from 4000 years ago, that was buried under around 30 metres of ash and pumice during the volcanic eruption that turned Santorini into the island(s) it is today.  The town showed some astonishingly modern capabilities - for example they had buildings up to 5 stories high but in the rest of the world 2 or 3 stories was the maximum for many, many more years.  About one hectare of it has been excavated, which is what we went to see.  Fortunately UNESCO decided that this was a place worthy of some significant expenditure, and they spent 40 million euros putting a roof (the largest area roof in the world apparently) over the whole of the current excavation area.  This made it almost comfortable to walk around and listen to our guide - who is an archaeologist.  Unfortunately there is nowhere near enough money to continue the excavations properly (the money you pay to see the site goes to the Government, not to the university); which is really sad because this history could be completely lost.  What we did see was amazing though.  Here's just one example:

After Akrotiri we went to the highest point on the island for a photo stop, and then back to the shopping area (of course) and from there we got the cable car back down to the dock, and then a tender to the ship.
Overall, our guide was informative without providing the overwhelming amount of information that we got in Athens, and I really enjoyed the whole excursion.
In the evening we went to dinner, and found that we actually have a full table of eight people for this part of the cruise - two of the regular couples didn't show up (not surprising since the day on Santorini didn't end until after 9pm) but another couple joined us.  They unfortunately had no idea about the itinerary changes so it was quite disappointing for them to discover that we aren't going to Turkey and nor are we going to Naples.  At our table we now have two New Zealanders, two Australians, three citizens of the USA, and one Mexican, and all seem like really nice people, which is always a good thing!