March 21 - March 26: Santorini

Hello all!

This past weekend was simply amazing. Although my time in Athens has been enjoyable, the time I spent in Santorini was one of the best times I have had in Greece thus far.

Before I begin telling you about the trip, let me explain how I was able to miss so much class. Normally everyone in the program has no class on Friday. Fortunately for us, we also had March 25 off. The national Greek holiday celebrates two things, Greek indepdence from the Ottomans and annunciation (when Christ's birth was announced to Mary. Enough of the history lesson and onto my trip.

We left from Athens at 5:00 am and took the subway for about 45 minutes to Piraeus, the city's major seaport. We quickly boarded and were ushered up to the top deck. Seating inside the ferry was divided by price class, with the most expensive 'seats' being rooms with beds, the second-most expensive seats being reserved Brookstone-esque seats, and the least expensive seats being any seat that could be found on the roof of the ship or in the lounge of the fast food restaurant. Since we were poor college students we bought the cheapest tickets we could afford and fought for bench seats on the roof.

After two hours of rough seas and failed attempts at sleep, we realized that being exposed to the elements was uncomfortable. We all fought for seats inside and easily took unoccupied seats after the ferry's first island stop (there would be 5 more stops).

The 8 hour ride concluded and we arrived in Santorini at around 3:00 pm. We were picked by a friendly hostel worker and were taken away to Villa Manos, our lovely hostel. We checked in and began exploring our surroundings. The nearest city was a 45 minute walk away and on our way, we found a grocery store that allowed us to stock up on breakfast and lunch materials. Also in town, we found many quaint restaurants and used our free time to compare prices between them.

We headed back to our rooms and took naps. Later we called taxis had dinner at the Rooftop Gardens taverna. My friend and I shared orders of Musakka (a lasagna-like dished that is comprised of eggplant, noodles, and a hint of cinnamon) and salmon pasta. (Surprisingly, Greece has really great pasta. I guess Italian culture must have rubbed off on them.) Later we stopped by this pseudo Irish bar, Murphy's. The bar was filled with Americans and for one of the few times, I heard English spoken more than Greek.

We ended the night and headed back to our rooms.

The following morning (11:00 am) I headed off with my flatmate from back home, Carrie, and her two friends that were visiting from Rome. Her friends were leaving the following day (Sunday) so they wanted to be sure to see as much as they could. We went back to Fira and found that the buses left every two hours and traveled all over the island. Fortunately, we arrived 10 minutes before the next bust was leaving so we were able to immediately depart to the south side of the island.

The bus ride cost 1.90 euro and took us on a beautiful tour of the island (something we were not expecting). We ended up in Perissa, the black sanded beach that is most popular with the tourists. Since it was March, there were only 6 other people on the entire beach, allow us to absorb the true beauty of the beach.

We were really hungry by this point in the day, so were went searching for gyros. Unfortunately there were not gyros to be found (which caught us all by surprise because there were gyro shops throughout Athens and Fira). I guess it not being tourist season has it's downside. Eventually we found a beach front taverna and the cook told us he would make us a 'gyro'. Six euros and a huge meat-filled pita later, we headed back to the beach for a little R&R.

After a while the bus came and took us back to Fira. We were planning on catching sun set in a town called Oia that was located on the north side of the island. When in Fira, we ended up meeting two of our other friends that were staying at another hostel. We decided to 'do sunset' (I knew you'd like that mom) and caught the bus to Oia at 5:00 pm.

It took us about an 30 minutes to get to Oia and arriving two hours before the sun would go down gave us plenty of time to explore the city. Every step we took exposed us to views that were exponentially amazing! We first rounded the corner to find a blue domed church that overlooked the ocean. Reaching the church and turning to the left, we viewed a cliff full of white and blue homes that overlooked glistening water. The way the sun reflected of off the peaks of the waves made it seem as though the ocean were coated in diamonds. We reached a point that overlooked the entire city and the ocean. Every direction you looked was breathtaking.

With time the day became increasingly overcast and the sun ended up setting behind a horizon of gray clouds. We walked away from the cliffs into the interior of the town and found a cozy restaurant. It was it's first day open, and after 3 failed order attempts I settled for a chicken pasta dish.

The buses were no longer running by the time we finished dinner, so we had to catch a taxi back. We decided to hang out with our friends that were staying at a hostel in Perissa.

We hung out in their room for a while and later went and played pool. It was a good night despite the fact that when I returned to go to sleep, my roommates were nowhere to be found. I ended up sleeping in the girl's room. :/

The following morning, I bid Carrie's friends farewell and found that our friends had rented quads. Carrie and I decided to do the same and our island adventures truly began. We toured the entire island, first visiting red beach, then black beach, and then Fira. A total of 12 of us went on the trip, making our gang of 6 noisy intimidating to other tourists.

The rest of the day was spend driving around or eating.

The following morning the whole group drove up to Oia for lunch. It was an hour drive from Thira where our hotel was, but the drive was beautiful. After Oia we returned the way we came and found a private beach. The sand was black with a blue tint, different from the other black beach in Perissa that we had visited earlier. After napping and reading for a while, the group had to return their quads so they headed back to Thira.

After returning the quads, we grabbed dinner at the Rooftop Garden (again) with some new friends that we had met at the hostel. We went back to Murphy's for a spell and then called it a night; we wanted to make sure that we were well rested for the big trip home the following afternoon.

I woke at 10:30 to the sound of wind pounding on the window. This was not a good sign because if it was too windy the boat could not port. With the wind pounding on my body and grains of sand flying into my eye, I drove into town to return the quad. I got back, packed my things, and waiting in the lobby to be taken to the port. Neither the hostel host nor us knew what would happen with the ferry, but we decided it was best to wait at the port than to miss the ferry. At 11:30 we were eventually driven to the port.

We descending from our hostel to the port and realized that we would most likely not be leaving when we saw a car being pushed around by a massive wave. We had nowhere else to go so we waited at the port. Our ferry was supposed to arrive at 3:30 but after talking to one of the ferry representatives, we found that if the ferry were to arrive it would be at 8:00 pm. We continued to wait. At around 7:30 pm, more and more people came to the port. By the time 8:00 pm rolled around we saw the ferry but discovered that it could not dock because it was too windy. Fortunately one of the hostel workers was there to pick up people that were supposed to be getting off of the boat. He told us that we could have our old rooms back, so we obviously took him up on the offer.

Upon arriving back to the hostel we grabbed dinner and went straight to sleep. It had been a tiring day.

The following morning was less windy and everything went according to plan. Our ferry left at 4:00 pm and landed in Piraeus at 12:30 am; we were back in our rooms by 1:00 am. Wow. What a trip!


ENJOY THE PICTURES THEY'RE CHRONOLOGICALLY ORDERED!