Day 20 - last day on Santorini

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I have awful wifi again so photos will have to wait 😞

Today was pretty uneventful. I really am not feeling the chaos energy of Santorini lol. Like, yeah it’s pretty and yeah I can see how it would be a great romantic getaway (if you got $$$)… but idk, it was just ok. I’m glad to have come once, but I def much preferred Crete.

I went to the Heart of Santorini - it’s a short little hike down the cliff side where it used to be a heart shaped hole in a cliff you could see the island through… now it’s basically just a roundish hole lol. Still nice though.

Since I was early in the day, I parked in Megalochori — to avoid the tiny rocky parking lot at the start of the walk lol. So after my walk I wandered around the town - it was surprisingly still VERY quiet at 9:30am. So quiet in fact that when I randomly followed some other tourists into the big main church for a look…. I realized there was a funeral about to start. Oh god. I quickly and quietly made my retreat lol. I always think about that visiting these churches around the world - like how much it must be weird / suck to have tourists accidentally walking into stuff all the time.

ANYWAY. I drove down to Perissa after that - the beach wasn’t bad, I think I liked it better than Kamari - less chaotic and looked more comfy, but maybe it’s just the timing of the day. I wandered around there a bit and then went to grab some food from Santa Irini (local bakery) - omg it was so good. I’ve been hard pressed to not enjoy local bakeries on this trip lol but this was the best of an already very good list. I got some cheese, tomato pastry thing for brunch and a honkin’ piece of apple cake that was sooooo apple forward in taste and fluffy as anything.

I debated driving up to the monastery but with a whack load of cruises in port again (and corresponding coach busses) I didn’t feel like doing battle on the narrow switch back road.

I headed towards Akrotiri where instead I did massive battle to find parking near my hotel. They had told me oh yeah just park on the street… the street is beside a small beach so the road was absolute chaos of ATVs and cars parked every which way. I continued my “no parking? Screw this” and left lol.

I decided to drive back to my old hotel, park in that neighborhood and walk back to Thira to kill a bit of time. Got another gyro from Nick’s (sooo good) and just wandered until I thought it would be quieter in Akrotiri to return.

Hotel is super cute - there’s a nice lounge area overlooking the water. I would have happily enjoyed that had I got parking earlier in the day haha. Oh well.

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