10: Trip to Fira.

our room on the cliff

 

A good walk, 20 plus minutes, mostly downhill, which means it is mostly uphill coming back.  In town, from the cliff, you can see the old port.  To get down off the cliff to it,  you take either a cable car or walk the meandering sidewalk all the way down - 527 steps.  Not ordinary steps.  They are 2 or 3 paces wide, and also angled downhill like a ramp.  So a good workout and my guess 30 office stories high from bottom to top.  Oh another way up or down is via the stairs "on donkey".

 

Wayne, Lisa and I decided to walk down.  Occasionally a herd of donkeys either empty going down or loaded with people coming up came upon us and in most cases they went around us.  In a few cases we shimmied to the sides.  A great experience.  Hard working donkeys, but they looked very well taken care of.  Could have been a total of 100 donkeys.  Each night, after the business closes, they hose down and wash the sidewalks.  Oh did I mentioned we had to dodge a few poop loads?

  

Wayne and donkeys

 

Lisa and donkeys

At the bottom is a tourist trap type port.  This is where the cruise ships drop their guests  coming to spend a day in the town. 

We took the cable car up, 4E each, they can move 36 people, 6 per car up while the same amount come down the other cable.  My quick math, they do about 80E gross per minute on that cable car.  Sweet.

Then we met Linda at the top and traversed the town's narrow streets and shops, stopping (again as in Mykonos) often to take pictures, and into each and every jewelry store, right Linda?

Then the upward walk back to the hotel.  At the hotel we headed for the terrific pool, had a swim in the refreshingly cool water, relaxed, and cleaned up for dinner that night.  Back to town, for a sunset dinner on the cliff, more shopping, and the walk back.  A busy, fun and filled day.

You can see out our window the half dozen or so cruise ships of all sizes that come in during the day, and usually leave at dusk.