Santorini, Greece

Days Four and Five (sort of)

We're now waiting on the dock at the port in Santorini for our ferry to Tinos.  The small port is crammed at the bottom of a cliff and is really more like a wide road than a port.  The area is lined with restaurants and shops at the bottom of the cliff and you can sit and eat while you wait for your ferry.  That is what we are doing now and the cafe has WiFi so I thought it was a good time to blog.

We spent the rest of the day Tuesday lounging by the pool in Santorini.  Our hotel is one of the 100s of hotels perched on the cliffs overlooking the caldera.  Our room is basically a cave in the side of the cliffs, as are most hotel rooms in Santorini.  It has its own patio and jacuzzi and the hotel has a pool and bar/restaurant.  Each morning we had breakfast on our patio.  We put in our order the night before and then they brought it up at the time we specified.  The main staff consisted of a mother and her three daughters and each of them went out of their way to make sure we had a good time.  In fact, everyone in Greece has been extremely friendly.  Tuesday night we ate dinner at a restaurant the hotel recommended that had a lovely view of the sea while the sun went down.  This was our big splurge meal so far, but it did not disappoint.  We had all heard of Mousaka but didn't know exactly what it was, so I just decided to try it.  Turn out, I like Eggplant.  At this restaurant like several others we've been to, after your meal, they bring you a shot of a liquor called Tsipouro.  Very strong, but very good and went well with the chocolate pastry that was also complimentary.  Another way the Greeks show their hospitality.

Yesterday (Wednesday), we took our time with breakfast and finally around 11am decided we wanted to go to a beach.  Santorini has several, but we really wanted to go to one that was more popular with locals and not full of tourists.  Our hotel recommended one called Minothilos and arranged a shuttle for us.  We were a little disappointed when we got to the beach.  It wasn't exactly a black sand beach as we had been told, but was more of a grey sand beach.  Some would just call it dirt.  It was in a small area about the length of a football field with rock walls going out into the sea on both sides.  Beyond the right wall was the airport and beyond the left wall was an anchored tanker of some sort.  At least there wasn't broken glass in the sand as I had seen in Honduras.  Nevertheless, we decided to stay since the umbrellas and chairs were free.  We got in the water a little and it was quite cold.  I mainly read my Nero Wolfe book and relaxed.  After an hour or so we decided to have lunch.  There were a couple of cafes/restaurants across the street from the beach so we picked one.  Turns out the owner is a fisherman and they have fresh fish every day.  We each had sword fish and Greek beer.  This meal made the whole beach trip worth it.  There was almost no one there but we had a nice view of the beach through a grove of trees.  And it felt like we were in a remote Greek village even though we were actually on the most visited island in all of Greece.  At that point we were all glad we had gone to the beach.  By the way, the sword fish was only about $11 each.  Everything in Greece has been cheaper than it would be anywhere else in Europe.  We prearranged our shuttle back to our hotel around 3pm.

We rested at the pool for a bit.  The weather was quite hot and the sun unforgiving so it was nice to take a dip in the very cold pool.  After freshening up, we decided to hike to the village off Oia to watch the sun set.  If you think of Santorini as a backwards C with the points facing west, our hotel is in a village slightly north of the middle and Oia is a village all the way at the top end of the backwards C.  It was about a four mile hike on foot paths that went up and down and was sometimes smooth and sometimes rocky.  We passed several small churches on our way, but they were all locked with no signage about services or anything.  I'm guessing these are more like shrines, but it seems the Orthodox Church could make some money by opening up all these little churches.  After a couple hours we finally made it to Oia, along with everyone else in Greece it seemed, pouring in on buses to watch the sunset.  The village was much more charming and high brow than the other ones in Santorini.  The main thoroughfare was a marble walking street lined with high end stores.  The path seemed to get narrower and narrower as we and everyone else made their way to the end of the island to watch the sunset.  People lined the walkways and railings facing west.  This is supposed to be one of the best sunsets in the world, but last night there was a bit of low lying haze so the sun disappeared a little bit above the ocean.  Oh well.  It was still neat to see the spectacle of the whole thing.  We ate dinner at a small restaurant on a side street which happened to be close to the local bus stop and so we took it back to our village.

This morning we ate our breakfast quickly and then hiked to the rock of Skaros.  This giant rock sits on a promontory that juts out from the side of the cliffs.  To get there involves hiking down a ways and then back up.  We chatted a bit with a couple from Australia as we walked around the rock and down to a small church on the cliff overlooking the caldera.  We got a lot of good photos and then we back to the hotel, packed up, and took a shuttle to the port.  We are now waiting for our boat to Tinos.  I look forward to blogging more later.  Thanks for reading.