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The Hot Springs
These are the hot springs, the red part to the back left. This is from our boat obviously, because I was not jumping with my camera! Happy Mothers day to all the mothers out there, and especially ours! Miss you both.
Hello to everyone else! Santorini... ah.... we don't want to leave here. So, since we last updated we have had nearly 3 days here. We did many things. The first full day we were here we decided to go to the Hot Springs and Volcano tour on a big boat. It was super windy and the boat was a rocky ride. Kim was not doing so good. I felt super sick and rested on Dennis for most of the trip until it smoothed out a bit. The volcano was... unremarkable? For an active volcano, it sure didn't looked active. We saw some steam.... yep... woo woo... that was about it! Haha, we were just expecting maybe a crater or SOMETHING from this active volcano called George I. Everyone is called George here, its a popular name. Our last two hostel owners names have been George, the volcano, etc etc. The hot springs were something different. Not at all like our Rocky Mountain ones. Let's see... no hot tub around them.. and oh yes.. you had to JUMP off the boat into the freezing Aegean
After jumping in...
Our Australian friends on the boat took this photo, they were super nice and gave us tons of info on what to do in Australia next year. sea to SWIM to the hot springs. But yes, your faithful and hardy Canadians were the first two to jump in off of three big ships. Everyone cheered for us. I don't think they were expecting it to be as chilly as it was, because we definitely didn't let on that it was that cold. But soon enough everyone jumped off and we swam to the hot springs for half an hour... but did we mention the sulphur? Yep... red gritty, slimy, sulphur that got allllll over you. Heehee, it was gross to step on the ground, we avoided the gooshy stuff.
Next we took a DONKEY ride up the hill back to the town of Fira. Ohhhhh it was SO FUN, we were with about 5 other Canadians (younger people) and we all had fun racing up the mountain on our donkey's, who pretty much would not move unless THEY wanted to. Haha, it was such a good, but smelly time. We showered, ate a lunch of fabulous amazing gyros (best we've had yet) and then we caught the bus to Oia for the fabulous sunsets. We had a view from our dinner table that was completely free
Dennis on a donkey
Heehee, our donkey's! Soooo fun! Very smelly, but such an experience! of anything else but the sun. It was fabulous. We've never actually seen anyone clap for God's work, but when that sun was down, there was applause up and down the island. It was magnificent.
Here's Dennis with our next day!
So yesterday, we rented a quad to take us around the island. We got to rent a 150 cc quad instead of the little 50 cc that we rented last time. No worries Mama Andrews, it did not go any faster, it just made it up the big hills a lot easier. No pushing this time. We decided to go to Kamari to see the ruins of Ancient Thira. We were not exactly sure where we were going the whole way. The roads did not seem to agree with our map but we just kept following the signs and made it with no problems. You should have seen the hill we had to climb. Lets just say that both of us who were a little sore from all of the walking the day before were very glad that we did not have to hike up the hill. We will show pictures later. When we got up there
Town of Oia
Tres belle mais non? Looks postcard perfect to us! the wind was blowing like crazy. It was actually hard for us at times to stand up without being blown sideways, and of course we were on top of a mountain on the Aegean. We did laundry yesterday so Kim was wearing her skirt. Well she didn't take any pictures of Ancient Thira because she spent her whole time making sure she did not pull any Marilyn Monroe impressions. It was pretty funny at times. Poor kimmy. Ancient Thira was pretty cool but not nearly as cool as Delos. Mostly because nothing was labelled and we had no information what anything was except for the odd temple or basilica. So Kim and I played a game where it was our house and we joked that this was our room and this was our kitchen and we had a guest house and a pool and a huge garage, even though I don't think any car could get up there, minor technicalities. We are richer than we thought!
Then we headed back down and headed around the giant mountain to go to Perissa beach. The drive took only 20 minutes but it was hot on the quad and the wind was
Oia
The houses were all painted so many colours, it was crazy. Purples, blues, reds, yellows, ah, amazing. a blowing. We arrived but were both starvin' marvin so we found this cool little gyros place and guess what we had, not that we are addicted or anything. Kim had a sausage gyros and I had a chicken one. MMMMM nice change.
We then headed to the beach and found ourselves some loungers to sit on so that we did not have to lie on the black sand that was a scorchin'!! Just walking on it with sandals was melting our poor little feetsies! They charged us to lie on the loungers but it was well worth it. I don't think either of us have ever put so much sun screen on to avoid burning because it was a scorcher! We would flip a couple of times and then have to go into the Aegean to cool off. We tried to catch some fish but no such luck, Kim wanted to take one home. After both of us felt that we were sufficiently sun drenched, and a little bit burnt on our shoulders, we hopped on the quad looking for bubble gum ice cream (Kim had a craving) and the bar Patrice talked about with the Canadian flag
Black sand beach of Perissa
Super hot sand, super hot sun= burning Kim and Dennis! outside of it. After driving the entire town of Perissa without finding either (sorry Patrice, we tried) we drove back to Fira to look there for ice cream. We got back returned the quad and jumped into our pool to cool off for a bit because we were hot from the drive. We then showered and went to meet Bino and Livia for drinks and food watching the sunset. It was really cool to share that with some friends from my work half way (or quarter way as we were joking) around the world. They then came back to our hostel and shared the bottle of wine we got from George in Naxos for free and a bag of Lays chips on the couches by our pool. We had a lot of fun hanging out with them. There was even talk that if they are not pregnant by next summer they may follow us to Australia. Could be a party!
OK, Kim wants to type about our adventures today so HEEERRREEEE's KIMMIE!!!!
Hmmm, Dennis only Kimmie Gibbler spells it like that, I guess you are thinking of Mikey! It's Kimmy, haha just joking. So today... well we woke
Bino, Livia, Dennis, and Kim
We met up with them again last night and had a drink watching the sunset. It was great, Dennis and I both ate dessert for dinner (waffles and crepes!) up for mass at the Catholic Cathedral here, didn't have to worry about an alarm because the bells sure were going to wake the town up. Mass was fun, there were several different languages and translators and the priest was young and really nice. We took some photos of the church and then headed for lunch. We had a village sausage thingy and Greek salad (Satorinian kebab). We were both really tired for some reason, so we went back to our hostel and slept for.. 4 hours... goodness gracious! We slept away our day! By the time we woke up all the museums were closed! Oh well, so we headed to the... da da da... WINERY!
Yep, Santo Wines... we tried 8 different types of wine after the bus driver forgot to drop us off and had to go back to the winery for us. So for 12 Euro we had 8 kinds of wine, as well as cheese, olives, and bread to cleanse our pallet in between. There were two puppies there we played with (we thought of you Laura and Chad) and we watched our last beautiful sunset in Santorini.
Then came the fun part... trying
Sunset last night in Fira
Apparently, the sunsets are better with clouds, but this was so red and orange it looked like fire. Granted, the sun IS a big ball of fire... but come on, work with us! to get home. The bus that was supposed to pick us up.. drove RIGHT PAST US! He didn't even slow down.. sigh.. what to do. We ended up hailing a cab. It was either that or walking back to the town. We got him down from 10 Euro to 8 Euro, which was still too much, but oh well. We did pray to God to send us a taxi with a reasonable price, and He did that for us, so we are very grateful.
Now we are just finishing this up and soon we will be calling our Momma's for Mother's day. Whew, this was a long blog! Next stop, CRETE!
Hope everything is well, and oh yes, all of our music friends, we want you to know, we will be recording an album when we get home of all the songs we have made up, with our personal favorite being "Sally the Salamander"....
Love and miss you all!
Yours in Christ,
Kim and Dennis
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Mom and Dad
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Another Wow!
Nice to hear from you and especially nice on Mothers Day. Dennis hope you got hold of your mom! Still having a wonderful time we see. Glad you are taking the small things like missing the bus in stride. Hope you enjoy Crete as much as Santorini. Looking forward to seeing all of your pictures because it is wonderful to see the sampling of what you send us. This are great here the grass is green, already mowed twice, the leaves are popping and the tulips are blooming a sure sign of spring and summer coming here in the great white north. Can't wait to get your next entry and see more pictures. Can't believe it's been two weeks and can't wait for you two to come home. Love