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Published: October 13th 2007
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boat
This is the boat we took! We felt like Captain Jack Sparrow would show up any second! Day three in Santorini-tomorrow we head to Milos. Our ferry leaves at 9:45pm and arrives in Milos about 1am. I know, its late. But it is the only ferry leaving for Milos this week! Our options were pretty limited!
Thursday we went over to Ancient Thira. It is the old (hense "ancient") town center. Thousands of years ago the volcano erupted and preserved the ancient city in lava. No human remains have been found, so it is believed that the people know the eruption was coming and headed for safer territory. We headed to that part of the island in our little Smart car (pictured below). Little did we know the ancient city sits atop a fairly decent "hill". We weren't too certain our little car would make it up the cobblestone winding uphill road. Luckily, it did. Once we arrived, we had to climb even further on foot! Needless to say, I don't feel a bit guilty about not getting to the gym. This trip has had its fair share of walking and hiking! Another 20 minutes climb and we arrived at Ancient Thira. Yeah yeah, really old rock that use to be peoples houses. Joe and I thought...aren't
ontheboat
On the boat with Santorini behind us...we're heading to the volcano! all rocks really old?? So what is so amazing, that THESE rockes USE to be a house? Hmm...I think we're beginning to get our fill of really old ruined buildings. The view however, was amazing. We hiked down, drove down and then headed to the black "sand" beach.
At the beach we realized that the black "sand" is really black rock, or rather, lava rock, which does not feel good on your feel. Flip flops do not do the job of keep rocks out either. We snorkled and saw some Greece fish, which we'll probably end up eating for dinner tonight at some local restaurant. As you may have guessed, the bottom of the ocean is lined with lava rock as well, so everywhere we stepped was painful.
Before heading back to our hotel in Fira we stopped for a little snack of fried tomato balls. They were cherry tomatos dipped in some breading and fried. It is a Santorini specialty. They were pretty good and Joe has been talking about them ever since.
Yesterday (Friday) we took a two masted boat tour which took us to the volcano, for a swim in the "hot" springs, then
cortvolcano
Cortney standing on top of the volcano! to watch the sunset from Ia (the northern most tip of the island which is renowned for the amazing sunsets). At the volcanoe we got off the boat and you guessed it...HIKED to the top! It was pretty interesting though. The word "caldera" means the crater formed from a volcano. Thus, the water surrounding what is present day Santorini, is really water that has filled in the crevice, or the land that has sank. From the top of the volcano, you can see that the land forms around the island (which now appear to be other small islands) were all one big island. About 1600bc the volcano went off and most of the "old" Santorini sank into the earth, the water filled in, and created the present Santorini. Kinda cool. From there we went to the hot springs, which weren't very hot, and had a little swim. Finally the sunset, which was pretty awesome. On the way back we overheard some Americans talking and asked them where they were from. They are from San Fransisco. We told them we were from San Diego. They thought that was funny because they had assumed we were Greek! The funny thing is, this is the second Americans who thought we were Greek or European (the other people were from LA who told us that). So Joe and I have decided to play it up a bit.
Well we finally have this picture thing figured out, so we'll post a few for you guys. Tomorrow we are going wine tasting and to the red sand beach. More to come...
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ian
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Awesome!
Awesome...I'm ready to cast sail!