At night from the anchorage, the whole Santorini cliff lights up across black water, and you watch it over dessert.
Our hour there
We came back on the tender with the cable car still in our legs and the caldera path in our shoes. Dessert was something with honey, carried out from the buffet to the stern terrace on Deck 9, and the candle kept going out. I said the white cliff across the water was Oia. It wasn't. It was Fira running into Firostefani and Imerovigli, every window lit, and you laughed because three hours earlier we had been walking along the top of it. Mykonos, Ephesus, Patmos, Heraklion, now this. Every evening a different shore, and across the table the same face, a little sticky, pointing at the wrong village.
Between 20:30 and 21:30 the ship is still at anchor inside the caldera and the dark has properly come down. The cliff glows across the water, the deck's string lights hang over the tables, and on the September Sunday the plan picks, the moon sits high to the upper right of Fira. You two can stay at the rail until the anchor comes up. Then cross to the starboard side as the ship leaves, where lit blue domes, possibly Oia, may slide past in the dark.
One honest thing. The anchorage times come from resellers and are not confirmed, and the last tender back leaves before departure, so ask the crew for both on the day. Take your dessert outside early too. The rail tables go first, and the rail is the whole point.
♡ We tried to count the blue domes from the rail using a dessert spoon as a pointer and gave up at eleven, still arguing about whether a water tank counted.