After one last night in what memory makes me realize was a very crowded and even stressful island, we packed up and prepared to leave on the ferry for Santorini.
At least we thought. When we got to the dock and fought our way up to the catamaran, the man taking tickets informed us our ticket was for the following day! We checked our calendar and notes and realized we had checked out of our hotel a day early without even realizing it! And the rude lady at the hotel's front desk certainly didn't say anything when we checked out early! So luckily we could change our ticket to get an afternoon ferry to Santorini because we had a hotel reserved there that night. Or so we thought...
After a pleasant boat ride into the most stressful and probably dangerous cab ride of my life and a cab driver who tried to charge 18euros for a ten minute ride, we made it to our hotel, "Villa San Giorgio." Except we had, online, booked a room at "San Giorgio Villa," which was near Athens. This problem, the hotel clerk assured us, had risen before, many years ago. But the kindness of the local Santorinians pulled through and they helped find us a lovely place to stay down the street. We lost money on the nonrefundable hotel fee, but at least we're alive, I guess?
Once we could explore Santorini and eat some amazing seafood, we forgot all about the shit day. Santorini is by far the best place we've been in Greece so far and the people the nicest we've met here. And despite it's popularity among the islands, Santorini seems to have decent prices on souvenirs! We walked around and then put the day behind us....
Today we had a wonderful breakfast and then went wine tasting! We quickly discovered how spoiled we are with CA wines; the famous Santorini wines were certainly not the best I've ever had... But we learned a lot at the "wine museum" we went through!
Next we visited Kamari and the black sand beach which was more dark gray then black but still cool. It looked and was (apparently) too hot to walk barefoot on.
In the evening we went to Oia for an unobstructed sunset. And grilled octopus. And baklavah. Yum. Oia had an interesting book shop where I loaded up on plays to read for the plane home as I've already plowed through the reading I brought while under an umbrella on the beach.
So many thoughts on Greece as a whole are starting to develop... Only about a week and a half more here to really see if I can put this crazy, unique place into typed word. Until then!
No comments:
Post a Comment