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Published: March 24th 2008
We had to get up around 4:30am to get our ferry. We wanted to get there early just in case... well I don't know just in case what. We just wanted to get to Santorini. However, Holly is a bit of an amateur traveler, so we got there 2 1/2 hours early... WWAAYYY too early. Anyway, we found 5 taxis sitting together hanging out and talking, and the drivers were very friendly for 5am. I was just waiting for my good impression of the Greek people to be ruined, but it really never did. I will say one thing, they are not the best smelling people. Anyway, we got on the ferry which really was like a little hotel. I am used to the ferry that goes from NC to the outerbanks, but this one had elevators and restaurants.
We arrived around 3:30 in the afternoon and had to pinch ourselves several times. We found a bus going to the center of town, Fira, and then a cab going to our hotel. Once we got there we REALLY thought we were dreaming. We split the cost of the room per night and it ended up being 27 euro/person/night. That's 2 euro
more per person per night than the hostel, and it wasn't even comparable. It was straight out of the Greek Island picturebooks. The "Blue Dolphins" hotel owner was Alex. Since it was the "off-season" they were doing a little repair, and Alex kept apologizing all over himself even though it was no problem at all. He showed us our room and when we saw the view we were floored. The double bed in the main room looks over a cliff and then out onto the ocean. Rose had to give Alex a hug (which I think sparked his little crush on her, which we took to our advantage throughout our stay). We went out to dinner than ight and walked around Fira. Most of the shops and hotels were closed and people were doing renovations, but it was great because we were practically the only ones on the island.
The next two days were summarized perfectly by John when he said to me as we were walking down a little street in Oia "you know you have had quite an experience when you have used the words amazing, awesome, fabulous, beautiful, and pretty too many times and are sick of
using them." Our second day we took a bus to the beach in Perissa, but aparently we didn't go to the area tha teveryone else goes to. We found, instead, a little beach area and set up camp. The beaches there are black because of the volcanoes, but there also is one white and one red beach (didn't make it there). We basked in the sun all day in the 75 degree weather and then went back to the hotel. We were going to get delivery for dinner but instead Alex asked us all to go out to dinnerw ith him and his friends! We gladly took up the offer and all piled in his car about an hour later. On the way there we picked up his friend Costas, another hotel owner on the island. He was the typical Greek with long hair, big nose, hair sticking out of his shirt, some huge gold necklace, and chain smoking. It was interesting to see how when we walked in the restuarant the waiter pratically tripped over himself trying to wait on us. The obviously were big shots in Santorini. So we had dinner and lots of wine with 6 other
Greek guys and one Spanish girl who was the girlfriend of one of them. They treated us and we slept like babies that night.
Our last day there we went to a winery. Santorini is a vineyard island, and although the wineries are mostly closed, Alex had a friend who owned a winery and gave him a call to see if we could still go. We ended up getting a private tour of the place and a wine tasting! We had lunch with Alex at a little souvlaki place and afterward he drove us to Oia. It is at the end of the island where thousands of people go to watch the sunset and then give an applause at the end. We were practically the only people there and we spent the rest of the evening walking around the little streets of Oia.
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