Advertisement
Published: April 16th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Hello everyone,
We have just finished our five nights on Santorini. It is a lovely island. Very hospitable and beautiful.
When we got up yesterday morning, I opened the door to our house and a dog was having a lovely nap on the padded seat just outside our door. It was a very friendly dog and loved the attention. It had to jump our wall to get in.
Yesterday we visited the volcano. The walk was only 1.5 km but it was all up! It is very barren but the view from it was great. The guide explained that when the volcano erupted in about 1500 BC, it was 40 times the force of Krakatoa and created 250 metre Tsunamis (the Thailand Tsunami was 15 metres). By the time it reached Crete 4 hours later, the waves were still 75 metres tall. It was responsible for decimating the Minoan inhabitants.
The boat that we caught to the island was great - wooden pirate ship style. Quite fitting for Santorini (the Black Pearl of the Aegean). We stopped at an island that had a hot spring. Quite a few passengers took up the chance to experience it. They
had to dive off the boat, swim through the ocean and then onto the Spring. 20 minutes later they had to swim back. Most people looked frozen when they returned because the water is still very cold. We had a good day, however, I got too much sun (my hat kept blowing off), and I ended up with a migraine. I missed the codeine, which is illegal in Greece.
Today we checked out and then made our way to Ancient Thira. It seems that in a lot of Greece, the higher you build a city or a building, the better. The road up to the city was crazy, steep, narrow, cobbled etc. But we survived. Thankfully we only encountered cars where it was possible to pass (which was only possible about every 100-200 metres). I did not want to have to reverse down a road that had no fall protection and a 500 metre drop! The city was amazing. Once again it was another decent walk up a lot of steps and slopes. It was built in 3000-2000 C BC. It has a fully working sewer system, theatre, a public bath, shops, temples, a church (Saint Stephen) and residences.
It was wiped out by the volcano that we mentioned above. It was discovered about 1900 and excavated. It was well worth the visit and it was also free. I think that it was close to being the highest point of this island and the views were sensational. We could see almost the whole island from the top. Best of all, entry was free.
I hated the car that we had today. It sounded like it had a lawn mowers engine and the worst clutch that I have ever used. Not handy in Santorini where there are hills and mountains everywhere.
Now we sit on the ferry again. We were meant to catch the fast ferry from Santorini to Pireaus, which takes about 5 hours. However, the ferry broke down or crashed today and so was not running. Thankfully we arrived at the Port early and decided to have a late lunch at a cafe there. The restaurant owners told us that the ferry was not running and we were able to catch another one. This one will take about 9.5 hours, so we will arrive at our hotel in Athens at about 2am (instead of 10pm). We
have already booked a tour with a private tour company tomorrow, so we expect to be feeling a little worse for wear in the morning. As long as I do not have to drive, I don’t mind. I have had enough of driving on this trip. We are not upset by it because we know to expect the unexpected when travelling and so far, everything has been on time and smooth.
The ferry that we are on is the same one that we caught from Pireaus to Paros. They are absolutely huge! They carry cargo and people, including semi trailers. On that first trip, Steve lost his mobile phone on the ferry. We made a couple of phone calls to the company and told them what it looked like and where we were sitting. We saw the ferry come in the following day while we were sitting at the cafe and rang the company to see if the phone had been found. They confirmed that it had, so Steve took a run (literally) down to the dock and collected it. He would have felt like a bit of a goose had he lost his phone on the second day
of our 90 day trip.
We are now only 2 days away from our first group tour. We are a bit unsure about how we will feel about it. We have been loving our independent travel. However, it is a cost effective way to see a lot of the must see sites in a short amount of time. We have 6 days in mainland greece and then 6 nights cruising the Aegean. We are not sure what the pace will be like or if we will have an opportunity to send emails and updates, so this may be our last entry for a little while.
Happy Birthday to Sherrianne on the 18th.
Love Jodie and Steve
Advertisement
Tot: 0.045s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 8; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0177s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kazz
non-member comment
Hello
Hi Guys i finally got to catch up on all your adventures and its sounds like you are having such a great time. I'm incredibly jelaous!! I trust that you're getting me a bottle of wine from all the lovely places your are going - at least you can avoid the tourist shops that way! Jo - have you recovered from your sickness and the boat?? Hope that you are still having a great time and can't wait for the next update - blog, Jenny or e-mail - it's all good as long as we hear from you. Donna was doing the mother thing recently and was going to get the international police to track you down because she hasn't heard from you! All good though, jen came in with the phone up date! Keep having fun. Miss you. Love Kazz xxx