Blogs from Santorini, South Aegean, Greece, Europe - page 44

9 am we met Tony and Manolos at the front of the restaurant. Tony suggests coffee at the beach. So we each hopped onto the back of a moped. They took the senic route overlooking the cliffs of Santorini 300m high with stunning views of the caldera while overtaking buses, cars and other vehicles. We don't have any pictures of this due to the priority of holding on for dear life. Mom, you and Amie now have matching tail-pipe burns :) We ended up in Parissa beach on the other side of the island and enjoyed some iced coffee with our new friends. An hour later, they left for work. We stayed on the beach a little longer, dipped our toes in the black sand ocean before heading back. The rest of the day was spent ... read more

We're on the fabulous island of Santorini. The population is about 2000 ppl according to Lonely Planet and I think that half of the population here must work in jewellry stores and tacky tourist shops. I'm a bit mystified by the number of jewellry stores here... do women get their men to buy them baubles on vacation?? I must admit that I had this misconception that Santorini was filled with these blue-domed buildings. These, I've actually only seen on churches. The rest of the buildings are white-domed but no worries... there seems to be a church every kilometre or so for your phototaking needs. Two things I have to rant about in greece: bikinis and showers. 1st. bikinis. the new fad around here seems to be this new bikini bottom. Its smaller than a bikini bottom ... read more

Arrived last night in Santorini after taking the milk-run ferry that stopped at almost all of the islands between Tinos and Santorini (even the ones with tiny ports... I've seen more boats in a kid's bathtub than in some of those places) it was great weather though and we saw the sunset from the water. Today we're going to check out some of the villages and try to get to Ancient Thira, there are some ancient Egyptian things there I would love to see. The view from our hotel is magical, bright blue waters and white houses, little lounge chairs and the buildings trickling down the cliffsides. Leslie and I are going to look into doing a tour to get up close and personal with the dormant volcanoes. Who remembers Dante's Peak? Oh btw this has ... read more

Didn't have a brilliant night's sleep, so we were both pretty tired this morning. We weren't 100% certain what we were going to do today, particularly when we walked into town and it was sooooo windy. I was constantly getting grit and dust in my eyes, so it was hell for Beck with her contacts in. Over another gyros we decided to stick to our original plan and head to Perissa. We had to wait a little while for the bus to Perissa, but it must be said that the buses in Greece are very reliable and comfortable. Each bus has a driver (obviously) and an attendant who collects the money. We originally had the idea of going to Akrotiri as well as Perissa to see the museum/archaelogical site, but we had reliably been informed that ... read more

The car had to be back by ten, but we didn't get up in time to do anything much with it. We were satisfied we had seen everything we had too anyway. The family who runs Hotel Grotto is so nice, and even though we have only stayed one night we are so impressed by how friendly they are. Part of our stay was a complimentary breakfast, and wait for it - they had cereal. It was by far the best breakfast we had had in Greece, and my muesli fix was just what the doctor ordered. There was also natural yoghurt which was bitter, but also very nice. After breakfast we walked the streets looking for a camera shop which would charge our camera battery. After running out of camera shops, and there were lots, ... read more