Tuesday March 24, 2009

Today we left our hostel at 6am to take the metro to the port of Pireaus for our 7:25am ferry to Santorini. We made it there without a glitch and quickly fell back asleep for our 8 hour boat ride.

After 2 or 3 hours of sleep we started waking up and wandering the boat. It was surprisingly very nice with multiple snack and coffee bars, a couple gift shops, and a restaurant to entertain us. Jenny and I ended up sitting outside in an area sheltered from the wind for the second half of the trip. The scenery was GORGEOUS. Once we got to our first stop, 4 hours in, there were islands to look at for the rest of the way. Our particular ferry made stops at Paros, Naxos, Ios, and finally Santorini!

At the port our hotel had a van waiting for us to take us to the hotel. We took a long series of switchbacks to climb up to the main road and then cruised cliff side for about 5 more minutes to our hotel in the capital city of Fira. We originally booked a hostel online but the front desk man at our Athens hostel contacted a friend in Santorini who hooked us up with a similar rate for a newly renovated apartment style hotel two blocks from the center of town. I tried to take pics but they don’t do it justice so just trust me it was niiiice. Yay for the off-season!


After dumping our bags in the room we wanted to go explore the town but during the 15 minutes we were inside clouds had taken over the sky with hurricane like winds….slight exaggeration….but still not the sunny beach island weather we were envisioning. Even so we walked through the town for a little while stopping at some travel agencies and internet cafes to figure out what to do during our time in Santorini.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at the supermarket for breakfast and lunch food since we had a kitchen with fridge to store and cook food in. I love foreign grocery stores…I could spend hours exploring all the different products.

That night the other girls weren’t up for going back our so just Jenny and I picked a spot in town for dinner. The spot we picked was full of people and didn’t have a menu with English writing and pictures so we thought it would be a good pick and we were right! They didn’t even have a special secret menu written in English…the waiter had to just make some suggestions…definitely a European first. We shared a Greek salad topped with a giant slab of feta, I had the stuff grape leaves, and Jenny had the lamb. Delicious!!!