Days 4-5 - Santorini

Day 4 - Santorini

Early wake-up call today so we could catch our 8:30am flight to Santorini.  This time, all three of us on the same flight with plenty of time to get to the airport, but it involved a 5:30am wake-up call.  No drama at the airport.  Our flight left on time and took 31 minutes wheels up to wheels down.  We grabbed our luggage, had a car waiting for us, and were at our new lodging by 9:30am.  First stop was a bakery for much needed sustenance and the opportunity to plan our day.  Yes, I already had a “suggested itinerary” for the day, but I’m flexible and things change.  We decided on a rental “vehicle” for the day to take in the sights and visit a winery.  After going to multiple rental locations and trying to secure either ATVs or Scooters or a Convertible, we ultimately ended up with a normal boring car.  In hindsight, the air conditioning was probably worth it.

Santorini is an interesting island topographically – imagine an enormous volcano blowing its top off, and what is left is about 2/3 of an outer ring – that is Santorini and the middle area that is mostly filled with Ocean water is the caldera.  There are some new islands in the middle of the caldera, but for the most part, you can see all of Santorini from anywhere on the island as it is crescent shaped.  Also, Santorini is just a nick name, and the island is called Thera (or Thira).  Who knew.  Our hotel is pretty much in the middle of the crescent in Imerovigli, which is next to the one of the “major” towns of Fira.  There are a few main roads that circle the island and lots of tiny little side roads.  We haven’t figured out what road signs mean – a circle with a line through it means do not enter, but a circle with a big X apparently means no parking – or so we think.  Regardless people still park anywhere and drive anywhere and cars are parallel parked in both directions.  Alleys and streets look identical, and I don’t think anyone cares if a street is one way or not.  You just seem to go.  Vehicles are made up mostly of tiny cars like Smart Cars and Fiats plus ATVs and scooters driven by tourists.  Our car, a small hatchback by US standards, is basically the biggest vehicle on the road, tourist vans aside.  But it was literally the only vehicle left by the time we made up our minds.  So off we went.

Santorini Pano to the South

First stop, the Santo winery – Lauren picked this winery out after extensive research, and it was a great find!  There are 15-16 different wineries in Santorini.  They don't grow grapes the same way you would expect on vines - here, the grapes all grow in little clusters on the ground - they all them "baskets"; they are grown this way to protect the grapes from wind and airborne debris (sand, salt, etc.).  Funny thing is that you see these grape baskets absolutely everywhere.  Anywhere there is available space, grapes are growing.

Grapes next to a major road

More grape baskets

Santos sits on the rim of the caldera, so the view was spectacular.  

Candid Lauren!

Damon and Lauren split a tasting of six wines, and I just had one glass of our waiter’s favorite pick.  He described it as “cherries and bubblegum”, which sounded horrific, but I went with the suggestion, and it was quite delicious.  In my humble opinion, tasting nothing like bubblegum nor cherries.  

My bubblegum & cherry wine

After another round of Instagram worthy photos, we visited the lost city of Akrotiri, which is assumed to be the Lost City of Atlantis that was buried by a volcano about 2500 years ago and discovered in 1967.  We didn’t know what to expect, but the lost city turned out to be pretty amazing.  It is a live archeological dig that is enclosed within an enormous covered building over the entire village.  There is evidence of a wealthy city including buildings, pottery (still intact) and moldings of tables and other furniture that were left in the ash after a volcano erupted, burying the village.  Admittedly, as we were walking through, and the placard descriptions described buildings and grand staircases and statues that were part of what we were looking at, I could only make out the occasional wall and maybe a window, so kudos to the archeologists who have spent more than 50 years trying to figure out this 2500-year-old civilization.

Just a fraction of the city/site

Lauren, having not slept much last night, was dragging, and wanted to head back to our room for a nap.  I convinced everyone to make one more stop at the Akrotiri lighthouse a short distance away and is also on the Northernmost tip of the Island.  It was worth it – the view was stunning, and we could see the entire island. And, we took more Insta worthy photos.  PS - they sky is that blue - photos had no touch ups.

Lauren's view from the lighthouse

Posers

Poser?

On the way back, we found a little local seafood restaurant also overlooking the caldera and had lunch before heading back to our hotel at 4:30.

Damon and Lauren had a siesta while I went back out to explore – my goal was to find Skaros Rock, which according to Google Maps, was a short 15 minute walk.  The thing about Santorini is that there are no straight roads.  An alley looks like a road and a parking lot looks like an alley.  There is no rhyme or reason to the streets, it is hard to tell what direction traffic should be going, and there are no sidewalks.  So, I headed in the general direction of where I thought I could find a giant black rock. 

When people think of Santorini, one of the first things to come to mind is blue domed churches and white buildings built into the side of the mountain.  Following GPS, I found my way into the white buildings.  Now here’s the thing – they are a mixture of hotel rooms, pools, terraces, restaurants, shops, churches (blue domed and otherwise), and lord knows what else.  Everything is connected by stairways that start and stop at random intervals.  None of the stairways connect and nothing is level.  Some stairs are part of hotels, and some are public.  No matter where you walk, there are stairs leading somewhere. 

Each individual "room" is connected by different sets of steps

Still trying to follow GPS and 20 minutes into my walk, and nowhere near the big black rock, I quickly found myself completely lost.  I asked for directions to the rock (if you’ve ever walked in Santorini, you know that is laughable) and kind of sort of figured out how to get there; however, Skaros Rock is a whole lot of steps down and a whole lot of steps back up, so I figured I’d wait until I was back with Damon & Lauren so we could go together.  I backtracked and eventually was able to make my way back to the street and realized that after all of that, I was only about 5 minutes from our hotel.  I memorized the path to get back and picked up Damon & Lauren. 

Skaros rock from halfway down the cliff hotels

Sunset is usually around 7:15, so we trekked back out around 6 to make sure we got a good spot.  Like a pro, I got us back to the big black rock path and after a lot of moaning, convinced them that watching the sun set from the other side of the giant rock was totally worth it.  Every step down was a bummer because it meant an equal number back up, but we were on a mission.  

Start point on the walk down

still walking down - through a church

Photo rest

Do not enter... everyone entered.

Climbing back up the rock after walking down the cliff

We made it to the rock, saw that it was the former home of a (now decrepit) castle, walked to the front of the rock, saw a church (how it got there is anyone’s guess), found a crumbled turret, and spent the next 30 minutes taking THE MOST AMAZING sunset pictures and watching a truly spectacular sunset.  

The walk back was about as we expected – it was quick since we didn’t want to be walking across a giant rock and a run down castle in total darkness.  We hiked back to the top of the cliffside hotels and were all completely dripping in sweat. For whatever reason, a restaurant host saw us and ushered us into a very swanky restaurant with an outdoor seating area facing the caldera.  We sat down and had stupid expensive drinks while listening to amazing music.  For dinner, we went back to our low-key local bakery where we wanted a “light” snack.  Lauren had a Pastitsio the size of her head, and Damon had a “waffle” that included 3 scoops of ice cream, a jar of Nutella, bananas, whipped cream, and, of course, a waffle.  We finished it.

Finally back home, we showered and fell into much needed sleep.

Day 5 – Santorini

We had until noon before our car was due back, so we used the morning to drive to Oia (“EE-ah”) and jump off a cliff at Amoudi Bay, the Northern most tip of Santorini.  I’m a sucker for “the top 10 things to do in…” and this was on the list.  After a breakfast of eggs and a ridiculous quantity of mini pastries delivered to our room, we drove the 30ish minutes to Oia, parked on the side of the road part way down a steep hill, finished walking to the bottom of the hill where we found the cutest bay with a bunch of restaurants and boats.  

We continued walking and looking for a cliff to jump off.  A short hike later, we saw a few people hanging out on a rock platform, and they told us we had arrived.  They pointed across a narrow channel to where the cliff was – on the side of a giant rock freestanding in the water.  

Lauren and me debating the swim to the platform

One of the guys had just done the jump (a back flip to be precise) and gave us some pointers.  First, don’t worry about the current (which looked VERY STRONG like it was going to carry us out to sea), just swim to the rock, don’t climb up the rock, swim around to the side you can’t see (“trust me”) and climb up the rusted ladder over there (he points to something we cannot see).  It’s only about 50 meters in open water in a current he swore was not very strong.  

Lauren on the rusty ladder

They offered to take pictures of us from their safe spot, which we gladly accepted.

Lauren was the first in and swam, drifted, floated across the channel with me doggy paddling and side stroking behind her and Damon waiting to make sure we were mostly across and didn’t need saving before he jumped in.  We made it around the rock to the rusty ladder and were surprised to see a little church on the rock (there are churches everywhere here).  

We climbed up to the jump point, which looked totally reasonable from land, but totally different up close.  As we approached the jump spot, there were two “oh shit”s and one “no way”.  It was supposedly only about 20’, but it felt significantly higher.  Not one to chicken out and trying to be a good role model to Lauren for doing idiotic things, I volunteered to go first.  

Still debating the jump

It took a few minutes and about 20  “1-2-3” counts before I let out an “OH F-WORD” and jumped.  I hit pretty hard (I am not a graceful jumper) but was still alive.  Lauren was next.  It took Lauren about 185 false starts, one throwing in of the towel, one volunteer for me to climb out and jump with her, and a whole lot of cheering from the much larger group that had started to form on land, but with much coaxing and encouragement, she finally made the jump!  

My horrible form

Lauren's perfect form

Damon, who is not one for heights, happily video’d us but was a “no way” when it came to jumping.  He climbed back down the giant rock and into the water to swim back with us.  We swam back to shore and made our resident photographer swear to send us pix and video (which he did), walked back to the car (only stopping for more Instagrammable pictures), and got back to the car rental place at 11:54 – a solid six minutes to spare.

Next on our list for the afternoon was a 5-hour sunset boat cruise around Santorini.  We had an hour to get our stuff together and were picked up at 1:15pm. Unfortunately, we were the first pick up and spent well over an hour driving around the entire island picking up other guests for our 2:30 departure.  The boat was a good-sized catamaran and held about 50 people.  Our first stop was the “hot springs” – a small cove supposedly warmed by the volcano.  We all jumped into really cold water and swam around.  Every now and then you might happen across an unusual warm spot that could just have easily been, well, not warmed by volcanic action but rather by human “action”.  Regardless, more photo ops and then back on the boat to warm up in the sun. 

Not-so-hot springs

There were a few more stops that we made here and there but the wind had picked up and it was much nicer to hang on the boat and drink unlimited free wine than it was to be wet and in the wind.  The cruise around the island was beautiful.  We were able to see the cliffs, the winery, the lighthouse, Skaros Rock, pretty much everything we had done the day before, only from the water.  We visited some of the popular beaches (red & white), but mostly enjoyed the views from the water.  Eventually, we anchored and had a delicious traditional Greek BBQ dinner.  We sailed around for a while more while rocking out to some truly excellent tunes as we made our way to the perfect viewpoint for the sunset. 

While not officially sanctioned entertainment, we had one guy on the boat that started dancing and didn’t stop. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was dancing alone.  Admittedly, the music was awesome, and it looked like he was having a fine time.  I kept telling Lauren that we should go join him to get the party started but she was hesitant, so we sort of dance/bounced on the sidelines with everyone else on the boat.  Not one to sit on the sidelines, all it took was the Macarena for me to get out there and join the dancing guy.  His partner quickly joined and then I was thrilled to see Lauren come running out and the four of us made up the dancing entertainment at the front of the boat with one other girl eventually joining.  The best part was afterwards when one of the guys said to Damon in a thick accent, “you have the dance scene, yes” “can you send to me?”.  The dance scene.  I was cracking up.  Damon thinks he said “dance-ing”, but I will swear he referred to it as the dance scene. 

Doin' the Macarena!

The sun was close to setting when the DJ started with ABBA music.  As soon as the song "Mama Mia"  (which Lauren had been waiting for thanks to Mama Mia the movie) came on, Lauren and I hit the dance floor again in what can only be described as a Greek wine induced dancing frenzy as the sun set on the horizon.  

No video posted to preserve our reputations...

We watched what was an equally spectacular sunset made even better by the fun on board the boat.  Once the sun dipped below the horizon, we headed back to shore and back to our hotel, but not before making one final stop at our favorite local bakery for some Baklava.  No waffles tonight.

Postscript – at about 9 in the morning as we were getting ready to leave, we all sort of heard/felt something strange.  Damon and Lauren commented that it felt like the building shook.  I was one floor above them and heard, but didn’t feel anything.  They both asked if it was an earthquake, but since it only lasted a few seconds, we quickly forgot about it.  More on this tomorrow.

The sign is for the Kofini supermarket, but we still heart Santorini.