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Published: November 12th 2006
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We began our trip to Santorini by leaving Olympia at 7am on the train. Our train took us from Olympia to Corinth then we transferred to a train to Athens. This ended up taking about six hours in total. We then went out to the docks at Piraeus to buy ferry tickets to Santorini. Our ferry was to leave at 5:30pm and we could board at four. So we hung out for a couple of hours and waited to board. I must admit the idea of taking the ferry scared me quite a bit at first (they are so unnaturally large) but once we got started I thought it was pretty cool. We arrived in Santorini at 4:00am, with no place to stay and no idea of what to do. There were a lot of hotel runners at the pier to greet the boat but we decided to take a bus into town and try and find the hostel. When we reached town there was another man on the bus and one of the hotel runners who said that he could give us a room for 25Euro. We were too tired to argue. We thought if it sucked we would just
stay the night and if not we would stay for the whole time. Once we finally got to the hotel we were pleasantly surprised to find a good-sized room with our own bathroom, fridge, TV, table and chairs, and a nice view. It was clean and close to everything - perfect!
The days in Santorini were mostly spent relaxing and enjoying walking through Fira (the main town on the island). Little streets and lots of stairs led to new vistas of white washed buildings, blue-green water, and dramatic cliffs. Santorini was what you dream a Greek island to look like plus lots of donkey crap.
The strangest thing is that on this lovely Greek Island we found the best pancakes that we had ever had in our life at Mama’s Restaurant. Mama’s was an entertaining place to eat. We had to pass the restaurant every time we went from our hotel into the main part of town. The first time we walked by we heard a boisterous voice yelling out asking us if we were hungry, when we replied no Mama said that when we were to come visit Mama - so we did. The next morning we
went for “the best American breakfast in town”. We were warmly welcomed, ask where we were from and promptly introduced to fellow Canadian diners. Mama would walk into the room and ask everyone if they were enjoying breakfast and then give out free hash browns or pancakes to everyone. And if you left without thanking Mama she would yell at you down the street until you thanked her. Needless to say we went there quite a few times while we were there.
Probably the most memorable day in Santorini was what we now refer to as D-Day or Donkey Day. We decided to take a day trip on a glass bottom boat to an active volcano, a reef, a hot spring, and another island with a “traditional town” on it. So we walked down the 650 steps down to the pier and headed off to the volcano. Walking on the active volcano was quite cool and reminded us of Lord of the Rings (if you look at the pictures you will see why). The reef was boring and uneventful and same with the hot springs. Although the 3 hours on the island with the traditional village took the prize
for boring. We walked up a couple of hundred steps to the top of the cliff to this town just to learn there was NOTHING there! We have no idea why were dropped off at that island for 3 hours. But the icing on the cake of the day was when we got back to Fira. The pier is about 650 (they are numbered) steps from the town in the form of switchbacks that leed up the side of a cliff. The choices for getting back to the town were: walk (no way!), cable car (my choice), and donkey ride. Kyle really wanted to do the donkey ride and I finally gave in. I hate riding horses and my feelings about donkeys are pretty much the same. My donkey seemed to favor the side of the path that had a very low wall separating it from a very sharp drop down the cliff face. This scared me shitless! I finally learned to how to keep my donkey away from the edge when the master of the donkeys came up behind us. All of the donkeys seemed to want to impress the donkey master and so they sped up - but
none more then mine. My donkey decided he would be the leader of the pack and proceeded to sprint passed all the others freaking me out even more. Needless to say I was very happy to finally get off!
We took the ferry back to Athens. This ride was not as smooth and we could not wait to get back on solid ground. We had one more day in Athens buying last minute gifts/souvenirs before heading back to Belgium.
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