Strike and Strike-outs

Both of us this whole trip have had high hopes for Santorini (the largest and most populated island of the Cyclades). Jorie was excited for Santorini so she could finally see where 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' and 'Mama Mia' were both filmed. I was excited to see the island after studying it in geology classes in college. To say the least, both of us had high expectations and images in our head of what Santorini would be like... Santorini isn't a mystical volcano land or a city with donkeys rather than cars. After two days of bad weather on the island, it honestly didn't live up to our expectations. But it's still a rather cool Greek island.

Although we were unable to ride donkeys, Santorini has inspired Jorie to maybe make some money off her donkeys at home with some donkey rides at birthday parties and such. Greece has really hurt our budget, so we both might be getting creative with jobs when we get home.

Anyways, after a late Saturday night (due to our midnight ferry ride) we had more of a leisurely Sunday morning. We had fantasized about renting scooters but in reality a car ended up being safer, more practical, and a lot drier with all the rain. We drove up to the top of Ancient Thira which had beautiful views. The island is much smaller than we had imagined and it is very narrow- you can practically see the ocean from wherever you are on the island. It is significantly more fertile than the other islands in the area due to its volcanic soil. From Ancient Thira we could see the black beach and the location of the red beach.

We walked along the coarse black beach until the rain came and then we took cover in the beach front stores of Kamari. In the torrential down pour we drove up to Fira, the capital town of the island. Fira is built on the cliffs that overlook the giant caldera and bay. The views are impressive but the town has little charm. After some window shopping we drove up along the coast to the town of Oia.

Oia is the town that finally lived up to all the pictures and images we had conjured up of Greece. It is a charming town with traditional Greek architecture built into the cliffs of a peninsula. It was awesome! We loved walking around this beautiful village and shopping. We even splurged on dinner at a place that overlooked the bay and back to Fira. Fira looked like snow on top of the cliffs.

Today we had a day of constant strike outs, as nothing went as planned. We woke-up early to go on a boating adventure with the family from our sailing trip. When the driver picked us up at 6:30 AM the family wasn't in the van as planned, and needless to say we had to drive back across the island to their hotel. From that point on the morning was in a total state of chaos, however, Jorie and I remained the calming force. Our relaxed attitude wasn't very contagious with the teen angst of the 14 year old boy constantly battling with his mother. The morning consisted of a serious game (I don't think the mother would refer to it as a game) of lost and found; however, the 14 year old boy was very skilled at the losing part and the finding aspect of the game was not his strong suit. First it was a jacket, then 2 cameras, then a memory card and then a 10 Euro. This game of lost and found monopolized the majority of 3 hours: the mother frantically calling the taxi company that the cameras were left in, then Jorie and the boy going back up the cable car to meet the taxi man, then them not being able to return because of the lost money.... and the list goes on.

Simultaneous to the game of lost and found, we took the cable car from Fira down to the old port. The cable car had incredible views of the caldera and of the town. The family had arranged a private boat to take us out to the volcano, to the hot springs and then back through the bay. We waited for ages for the boat to come, as we thought that the boat might be on "Greek maybe time" (Greece is not a country that really functions with a time focus, my mother would fit right in). As we sat waiting, 4 local men smoking their cigarettes turn to us and casually say "oh your boat is not coming". We thought they were just messing with us because they seem to have very little idea of the situation or any authority to tell us what was going on. But I guess you should never really doubt a local, as it turned out that they had talked with the captain who said the weather was too bad to go. This created an onset of indecisive chaos, where we tried to find another way to go to the volcano. There are way more details than you all ever want to know, the moral of the story is that we ended up right back at our hotel 3 hours later not having gone out on the water.

Our day of striking out continued with trying to find a place to do laundry... We literally walked around for over 2 hours with almost all the cloths we have on the trip trying to find a laundromat... You would think Jorie would have a sixth-sense/built-in homing device to find a laundromat but unfortunately that was not the case. Anyways, after continued frustration we found ourselves eating some of the best falafel and drinking wine coolers.... The pouring rain also limited the rest of our afternoon.

Tonight, just outside the security line at the airport we had our amazing creative budget dinner. Our first course was Greek yogurt, our second course was honey nut cherrios (that we stole from our boat) that we ate in empty yogurt containers, and our third course was a banana. We enjoyed our well rounded meal while we people watched the security line. Luckily, Jorie was given two sporks as a going away gift for the trip and these have been monumental in our budget eating.

In keeping with our strike out day, Athens was on strike today, so our flight was delayed. We sat and played games with the family in a stuffy, crowded airport. When we finally arrived in Athens at 11 PM there was no public transportation due to the strike, so all 5 of us (the family and us) piled into a taxi. The taxi driver definetly didn't know what a defroster was which made the drive a bit sketchy with fully fogged windows (6 people in a small car in pouring rain). And I dont think dotted lines on highways in Greece indicate anything to a Greek driver.... We finally arrived to our hostel just after midnight and for the first time all trip Jorie and I were separated... We are having to sleep in two separate rooms. Hopefully our umbilical cords can stretch for a night.

Recommendation: After seeing 7 Greek islands our favorite was Mykonos. It was classy but still affordable, quaint and charming, picturesque Greece and has great beaches.

Radom things we forgot to tell you about our sailing trip:
- we sailed along side a dolphin which was so cool....
- Jorie is fascinated by the topless beach culture but could not muster the courage to truly 'experience' this first hand
- Greek public bathrooms are the worst because not only do they not have toilet seats, most don't have locks either