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Published: December 19th 2009
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Today was a magnificent but crazy day. In my quest to make sure I saw ALL of the island, I rented a car. Yes, you read that right, I rented a car. I am pretty sure America is the only place where they care about you being 25 years of age (and I guess this means that I have no more birthdays to look forward to, bummer). Perhaps driving in Greece after not driving at all for three months wasn’t the smoothest move. Literally, definitely not. Probably figuratively so too. Speaking of crazy roads, there are many here. We complain a lot about the roads in Northern Virginia, and they do sometimes leave a lot to be desired, but they’ve got NOTHING on Santorini’s roads. Nonetheless, 10 minutes and 35 euros later, I drove off in my little smartcar (It’s so cute! 😊 ) ready for a day full of adventure. Renting a car here is almost too easy… I spent the 5 euros extra to get some insurance, although they made it sound like even if I totaled the car it would only cost 300 euros!
Basically the day consisted of me driving around and stopping by the side
of the road a million times to take pictures of different views. Since the island is like a half-circle, it is kind of cool in that you can take pictures of the different towns on the island (there aren’t many) from the other towns. I think I’ve covered pretty much all of my views in that sense. Since most of the places I wanted to visit were either closed (the art and wine cultural center, the wine museum) or I couldn’t quite figure out to get to (Ancient Thira) it was pretty much just a lot of driving around. I drove first to Kalamari. Actually I was first going to go to Ancient Thira but then I ended up on this very intense uphill curving road (see picture) which I finally just wasn’t even sure I was supposed to be driving on, so I kind of just turned around and headed back down the hill to Kalamari.
Kalamari is cool because it has one of the black beaches. Since pretty much everything was closed I hung out on the beach for a bit and went and got something from a bakery for lunch which I took back to the
beach and ate. There is a movie theater in Kalamari. For a while I was seriously into the idea of going back tonight to see New Moon. Then I was kind of like wait, that’s a movie with vampires, and I am a scardey cat. And I am basically living alone. I feel like this will just freak me out. I also haven’t read any of the books yet. So all of those factors helped to put the kibosh on that.
Next I headed south, with the vague idea that I wanted to drive all of the way to the southern-most part of the island where there is a lighthouse, possibly stopping at more beaches along the way. I did stop at more beaches. Although when I stopped at the red beach I’m not really sure that I was in the right place. It was red, but it wasn’t much of a beach. The signage really isn’t that great, and there’s not really anyone around to ask for directions.
I only had one real “oh shit” moment. I was almost to the lighthouse. Looking back on it, it’s comical how close I was—like a minute walk down the
road. Well I was driving along a cliff-side road with nothing but ocean on the other side (the island seems to feature several of those) and I came to a small dip in the road where there was a big puddle of water. I quickly considered my options: 1) risk driving through and get stranded and wrecking the rental car in this place where I wasn’t even sure how they would be able to rescue me (I flashed back to the Mercedes rental car in the ditch in Tuscany… and decided this could end worse, much worse). 2) Backup along said scary cliff-side road a short distance to the bus stop I had just passed and turn around there. I opted for option #2 and, amazingly, didn’t even have a melodramatic meltdown. Probably only because I didn’t have an audience. Although that was probably for the best. After stopping and taking some pictures from my perch at the bus stop I couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw that there were goats just munching away at the grass on the harrowing cliff below me. I love goats. These must have been my guardian goats. I ended up walking to the
lighthouse, which really wasn’t much to see anyway. Craziness. A little earlier, I had been driving along and a couple of chickens had come running out into the road. It was at that point that I was like, hmmmm, this is surreal—I think I am ready to go back to civilization now. All the moments when I was like, what am I doing driving along some crazy road I just reminded myself that this was likely the only time I would ever be in this place, and that I just had to keep going.
After stopping briefly back at the villa, I decided to head north to Oia again, since it really is my favorite place. I decided to brave that other harrowing cliff-side road, since, after my earlier cliff-side road incident, I felt like I could handle just about anything. While it was still light anyway. Oia, is, after all, my favorite part of the island I have decided. If I ever come back to Santorini, I have decided I want to stay in Oia during the in-season at a ridiculously expensive place with a view of the caldera. I am really glad I went back. It was
neat to explore the town a little more and see it when there was more light. I also met some of the local cats, who turned out to be very friendly. I was patting one of them and all of a sudden there were like seven! Greek cats are awesome. I didn’t stick around for the sunset, because I just didn’t think my little heart could take driving that crazy road in the dark. However, I did stop at several points along the road to take pictures of the sunset over the caldera, which was amazing. I mean, there are just some moments in life that you have to “pull over” for!
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