Santorini - Sightseeing in Fira and Oia sunset - Day 10

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Woke up just in the nick of time to leap up and get breakfast at the hotel buffet. It was well worth it though, the hotel put on a huge, impressive spread of food; scrambled eggs with ham, bacon, meats, cheeses, little hot dog things, breads, apple turnovers, mini pitas, chocolate filled croissants (Steve say’s they were extra yum!), fruits, super sweet fruit juices, cereals and yogurts. Whew, I’m sure I forgot something but that was basically it, the only downside was you had to eat in the dining area, if you took the food back to your room or deck there was a 3 Euro per person charge.

We planned to go shopping in Fira and decided to go to the Hondos Center , so we parked at the entrance to Fira. We ended up stopping along the way at a tiny little store with beautiful sarongs made of silks and batik fabric. I bought some and so did Alice . Steve bought some hair clippers as his U.S. ones didn’t work even with the converter or adapter (for that matter neither did my hair dryer or Alice ’s curling iron).

We walked a lot! We went along the edge of the caldera for the entire length of Fira. We walked by the cable car and were going to take a ride down to the old port, but the line was ridiculously long. We had already decided that there was no way we were going to do the donkey ride down to the old port, it’s pretty much just a novelty anyway and we didn’t actually need to go down to the old port for anything in particular. We continued walking in a generally uphill direction and came across a convention center with an exhibition of Akrotiri wall paintings. We went in to check it out since the actual site of Akrotiri was still closed to the public. The paintings on display were actually reproductions, but were very cool anyway. The caretaker told us no pictures, but I did take some anyway when we were out of his line of site.

We went in the Catholic Cathedral to light some candles and take some pictures. We also walked by the Dominican Convent. Farther down the same street was an arts center where a live rock band was practicing. They were playing a cover song and they were absolutely horrible and Steve wanted to go take the drummers sticks away and show him how to do it. We continued on our way, stopped and bought some embroidered zippered purse things with Santorini on them for souvenirs. At this point we decided we needed to get something to eat, we saw a sign for a restaurant that had gyros for a couple Euros and decided to go in. The restaurant was on the 2nd floor and had a great view of the island away from the caldera. The food was fairly inexpensive and Steve and I thought the food was good for the price, but Alice didn’t like hers.

After we ate we decided to go to Perissa Beach. , it didn’t take long to get there, but we were a little disappointed as the beach was really rocky. I knew that the beach would have black sand and be super hot, but the water area didn’t have a sandy bottom, it had really slippery and sharp rocks. We did go in a little, but without water shoes, it was pretty much impossible to get too far. The bottom almost looked like concrete, but was really uneven and rough and slimy with algae. We stayed about an hour since we had to pay 5 Euros to use the chairs and umbrella. Steve and I tried to take a walk down the beach to see if it was any better, but we only got about a hundred feet before we gave up and turned around, it was just too hard to walk. Oh well, we knew the beaches weren’t going to be as nice as the beaches on Ios.

After we drove back to the hotel, we decided that we should drive to Oia tonight to see the sunset since that was where the best world famous Santorini sunsets happened, allegedly. We were cutting it close, so we raced through showers and got ready in record time (and I do mean record time for this trip) and drove like maniacs out to Oia. Okay, first of all, let me say that although we knew we wanted to see the sunset in Oia, we really had no specific location in mind to view it from (nor did we bother to ask anyone). We had to try 3 public parking areas before we found one (that was just below the bus station) with an open spot. As luck would have we ended up in one of the famous viewpoints by accident and because we kept walking toward the caldera and were trying to get away from some of the clouds. We collapsed in exhaustion from our mad dash to the sunset and sat down below the windmill to await the sunset. It was imminent for sure, we were only about 15 minutes away from the magic moment and all of a sudden the clouds rolled in. We took a bunch of pictures anyway and hung around on the slight chance that the clouds might break at the right moment. But alas, no such luck. We got lots of pictures of what I’m calling the ‘nonset’ and they actually aren’t too bad, especially the ones with the ferries heading out of the caldera and the ‘nonset’ behind them.

Since we were already in Oia and had no plans to return, we decided to walk around and look at stuff and grab a bite to eat somewhere. We ended up eating at Lotza Restaurant, which looked good and had a very nice view of the caldera and the town. However the place sucked, first off the server didn’t feel the need to tell me and Alice that we had ordered dessert wines instead of the local white wine we were asking about. Then we ordered 3 meals, but ended up with 4 because the server didn’t understand when we changed our order from 2 pasta and 1 seafood dinners to 1 pasta, 1 chicken and 1 seafood dinners. So they served us 2 pasta, 1 chicken and 1 seafood dinner and they insisted we pay for all 4 meals although it was their mistake. Also Alice ’s shrimp came whole in the shell with the heads and all. It was a huge fiasco to de-shell the shrimp. Cost us 81 Euros for a meal that was absolutely terrible. Did I also mention it took them forever to come over to our table in the first place and the meals also took the longest time to serve?

We walked around Oia and went the whole length of Caldera Avenue which is a pedestrian street. Saw some adorable dogs and cute cats along the way. We decided to walk along the main road back to the car and that was dark and scary, the cars flew down the street and you had to find a driveway or alcove to duck into to avoid being run over. After all that disappointment, we wanted some ice cream and decided to head back to Fira for it. We sat on the pedestrian street along the caldera to eat it. We headed back to the hotel room around 1am – No drinking tonight as the boat tour of the volcano is tomorrow!!

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