Friday, June 15, 2007

Greece Greatness 1

Our first island in Greece was a nine hour ferry ride southeast of Athens, between the Aegean and Cretian Seas. A crescent shaped volcanic island, Santorini surrounds the caldera of the volcano that created it in the center.








Our extremely cheap hostel was a 15min or so ride away from the port near the caldera center. However, cheapness definitely came at a price. A 10 person dorm with squeaky bunk beds, only one sheet, and roadside and patio side door (all of which meant we did not get much sleep).

But our time was mostly spent at the beach a 5min walk away, getting our burns started for the rest of the trip. Though it was not the ideal sandy beach setting, with larger black sand and lots of seaweed, it was quiet and fairly devoid of people. We also discovered a delicious pita place a few doors down from the hostel and enjoyed freshly made pitas for 2 euros (which Marshall still is obsessed over). One day we even hiked the 13km into the capital of Santorini, Fira, to see the tourist donkeys and to get a bus over to Oia for the so called wonderful sunset (Note: it was possible to take the bus to Fira too. . .) Unfortunately Fira was just too touristy to have a good time, and though Oia was very pretty, we had to catch an earlier bus back to Fira to get the last bus back to where our hostel was located, which meant we missed the sunset completely! But I did get Marshall out of bed the next morning at 5:40am to see the sunrise on the beach and that turned out to be absoluely beautiful, even though he was still half asleep.


But after a nap that morning the rest of the day had a few issues. First, some frustrations with the hostel owner who thought we were only staying three nights, then some room key issues. . . ie, it got lost. We asked for a new one then went to get some lunch for our one time restaurant outing in Greece. The stuffed tomatoes were great, then Marshall ordered sword fish filet, also delicious, and I got the fresh fish, which turned out to be a bunch of little sardines. Definitely learned my lesson from that to ask what exactly the fresh fish might be. But it was still good. And even better afterward, when we went back to the beach with my goggles I ended up finding the keys further out from the beach! Apparently in all our huff over the room mixup Marshall had stuck the keys in his swimtrunk pocket, we got in the water, and the keys fell out.

That evening we just enjoyed some cold milk and oreos, then packed up and went to bed (not really sleeping), before getting up early the next morning for our insane taxi ride to the port (first, the taxi broke down, had to be pushed, then he went crazy fast, and we were five really crammed people all being shoved into each other as he turned sharp corners). But this ferry ride was a much better one at least, and we even made it to the bus station in Athens for our bus/ferry to Zakynthos, our next island on the other side of mainland Greece, in the Ionian Sea.

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