Buon Viaggio!: Santorini!

Today begins our second day in Santorini, and wow, the descriptions and pictures of this place cannot begin to capture the beauty! The white buildings on the cliffs of the caldera are surrounded by sapphire blue water. I just cannot believe that people live here and see this every day! Cheryl and I both commented too that it is incredibly quiet and peaceful here.

Our last day adventure for our first leg in Athens (Monday) was spend wandering around looking for the elusive Anafiotika neighborhood. While we finally did find it, we spent about two or three hours wandering around trying to figure out where it was! It seemed like every person we asked gave us different directions to get there, but we got to spend a lot of time getting to know the local neighborhoods around Athens. We stopped for an AMAZING lunch at Scholarhio, which was a very authentic Greek restaurant. Instead of a paper menu, the waiter came around with a "live menu", that is, he brought a giant tray with 18 different dishes and we chose five of them to share. We had moussaka, Greek salad, spanakopita, meatballs, and fried zucchini. The moussaka and the zucchini were definitely my favorites, and I felt like I could have eaten several servings of each! I also tried a Greek beer, Alpha, which was surprisingly light and not too bad (which is a big compliment coming from a non-beer drinker such as myself). After wandering around for a bit longer after lunch, we came back to the apartment and got ready for our sunset tour with George's Taxi. Unfortunately, Helios, god of the sun, was not on our side and rather than a beautiful sunset tour, we got a beautiful cloudy and rainy tour. Despite the weather, we saw some beautiful beaches, amazing cliffs, and the Temple of Poseidon, which has an amazing 15 of the 34 original columns still standing. Our tour guide, Demetrius, also answered about the 5000 questions we had, including, "Does Greece have nude beaches?" and "What are some of the most popular American TV shows here?" (Answer: No designated nude beaches, but people would not stop you from going nude, and "NCIS", "Big Bang Theory (Big Bang Theoria)", and "Prison Break") I literally asked questions until I couldn't think of anymore, which if you know me, is A LOT of questions! But, he was very nice at answering them and it saved me a lot of time on Google! The only snafu we had during our trip was our trip to dinner. We both said we were in the mood for seafood, so Demetrius took us to his friend's restaurant in a small town where the fish was, on average, 60 euro! His friend told us this price was actually per kilo, but then said we could pick our own fish which would probably weigh .5-1 kilo. This was definitely not an overly nice restaurant, nor were we that hungry, so we asked Demetrius to take us somewhere a bit cheaper. We ended up getting gyros that cost a total of 6 euro for dinner and we got to befriend the local cats at the restaurant. All in all, it was a wonderful, exhausting day!

Yesterday we left very early to catch the ferry to Santorini. The boat ride, though about five and a half hours long, was comfortable and went by quickly. We arrived in Santorini and the view was breathtaking. We spent most of yesterday recovering from the drowsiness of the dramamine we had taken earlier that day, and so we just walked around seeing what there was to see. We had a small lunch at a gyro restaurant, dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant, and watched the sunset from our balcony. Today we are going to take a tour of the beaches and ancient sites, and explore the other side of the island (we are staying in Firostefani, near the capital of Santorini, Fira). We are staying at the Blue Dolphins Hotel, if anyone wants to check it out! Well, it is almost time for breakfast, so "αντίο" until next time, and "ευχαριστώ" for checking out my blog!