Greece: Athens and Santorini

We arrived at the very modern (thanks to the 2004 olympics) Athens international airport around lunchtime, and waited an hour fr the train to athens. We went out immediately to the centre of the tourist area (Monostaraki) looking for cheap food, and didn't find it. We kept looking, and eventually gave up and had expensive food. We had greek salad, potato salad and bread from a little cafe on Monostaraki. It was very good, and set off an unprecedented run of greek salads (we had one every night that we were in Greece). After our meal, we headed to the ruins of the ancient agora (town centre), then way up to the acropolis, which was very cool. I could just imagine Socrates kicking up the dust with his little brown sandals.

That night we took the train to Piraeus, where the ferries for the Greek islands leave from. We took the overnight ferry from Piraeus to Santorini, which took from 10:30pm until 8:30am. It was a pretty nasty experience. It's much cheaper to sleep on the deck than to hire a cabin, but they make you wish you had paid. They have the world's most annoying (I'm convinced that it's the result of rigorous scientific testing) announcement signal, which runs all night at the volume of a space shuttle launch. As if sleeping on a hard, narrow, slatted plastic park bench wasn't enough for karma!

We arrived on the beautiful island of Santorini on the morning of the 19th. We were picked up by a guy in a minivan from the tourist office who took us to our resort. The place was very nice, it had a pool and bar and friendly staff, and it only cost 15 euros (!) a night, right by the beach. We dropped our bags and then went and had lunch, and looked at hiring quad bikes, which is what you do on the Greek islands. We then checked in, had a quick dip in the pool, and then passed out for a couple of hours at 5pm, catching up on some much needed sleep lost on the ferry trip over. We had bread and cheese and cucmber by the pool for dinner, and then walked down to Perivolos beach at night and hung out there for a while. We saw some horses on the way back, and we stopped and had a lengthy conversation.

The next day we slept in, hired a quad bike, and drove (putted might be a better word) to the main centre of Santorini: Thira. We did some exploring there, had lunch and then struggled back up the hill on our persistent but frankly pissweak quad. We then went to Perissa beach, near the resort, which had an enormous cliff. We then had an awesome seafood pasta and greek salad at a nearby restaurant.

On the 21st we decided to extend our lease on the quad bike (we were getting attached to the little sucker), and then went and had good souvlaki. After that we went to Oia at the northmost tip of the island, and hung out at the beach with kittens and topless Italian girls. After we'd had enough sun, we left the beach and explored Oia for a little while, before heading back to the beach to watch the famous (read overhyped) Oia sunset. The sun basically dipped behind a haze of smog from Italy and went down fairly unspectacularly. Louise and I also discovered that it's physically impossible to self take a photo with the sunset in the background - your head always covers up the sun.

The next morning we went to red beach, which was quite rocky, seaweedy, and unsurprisingly, red. We used our youthful athleticism to commandeer a nice secluded spot to lie on the beach to read our Dostoevsky and Virginia Woolf (yes we are pretentious). We then went back to a restaurant near the resort for Tzatziki and Souvlaki (and of course, a Greek salad).

On the 23rd we got up early, checked out and caught a ferry to the island of Mykonos. We had a few hours while we waited for our connecting ferry back to Athens. We arrived there at 3pm and went to Paradise beach, which was pretty far from my idea of paradise. The strip of beach was crammed with people on pills, topless girls, and open club after open club of the the most annoying DJs you can possibly imagine. And then a little bit more annoying. I reckon that beach has the highest concentration of STD's on the planet. After lying on the beach for a while as far away as we could get from the crowds, we went back to the town, had dinner and went to the new port. We couldn't get a cab, so we walked along the road, with the busy street on one side and a sheer drop onto rock close by on the other side. Some kindly hotel driver picked us up half way and drove us to the port. After a brief run in with the crew of a luxury liner, we managed to find the pickup point and got on the overnighter back to Piraeus. We were on the 'deck' again, but this time luckily managed to find some nice comfortable reclining chairs indoors, and managed a pretty good, but still very short sleep.

We arrived back in Athens on the morning of the 24th, rather weary. We went to the hotel that Louise had booked well in advance, but it turned out they had messed up our booking and had no room for us. We were fairly pissed off, being tired and knowing full well that finding a hotel in Athens at the last minute in July is both difficult and expensive. We used their internet, and managed to find another one close by, which was not too expensive, and much nicer than the original one. That made us happy again. We then went back to the Agora, saw the temple of hephaistos, some more ancient Greek and Roman ruins. We had dinner that night at a place called Hani which had live music (two guys playing acoustic guitar), and a very nice dinner, even if we had to put up with the chracteristic pushy aggressive Greek restaurateurs that try to coerce you into their restaurants. It was a special occasion, because it was the last meal Louise and I would have togethere for quite a while.

The next morning I got up at 5am, said goodbye to Louise (who left later that morning for Thessaloniki), and took the train to the airport for my 9am flight to Amsterdam.

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