A vast echoing cavern, now with 1000 words.
Well, this is it! I'm in Santorini! By all rights, I should be sound asleep (it's 1:45 AM here), but I am not, for reasons I shall explain below. Conveniently, the hard cable for the internet connection stretches all the way across the room, so I am able to blog from the comfort of my own bed. Yay! Also, the internet connection is pretty fast, so yay to that as well.
First things first, however. The trip to Santorini was totally uneventful. The flight between Athens and Santorini was delayed for about 45 minutes, but all in all, that was really small potatoes. When I arrived in Athens, it was gray and rainy, so I was glad not to have put a day there on my agenda. Best to get to Santorini right away!
I did have a "this is a bummer for you" conversation with a couple who were also waiting for the plane. They are from Seattle, and it seems they missed getting on their cruise ship yesterday and are now trying to catch up to it. The plane was slated to land in Santorini at 4:30, which it did, and their ship was slated to leave at 6 PM, so I hope they made it. However, I'd just like to go on record as saying, who leaves their trip details so closely booked together that something like that can happen? I'd far rather have a long layover and know I was going to make it in time. I didn't ask them whether it was going to be all right with the cruise ship for them to board partway into the cruise--I know that when I took my cruise, that was not allowed. So, I wished them the best of luck.
Anyhow, Santorini? Beautiful! It was gray and windy here this evening, but even so, the view from my hotel? It's absolutely as glorious as promised.
So yes. I didn't get to the hotel until about 5:30 PM. The taxi ride was completely as expected (maniac driver on road with hairpin turns and few guard rails, though at least he wasn't on his cell phone), but the porter I thought I'd booked through the hotel was nowhere in sight, so Christa (the proprietor) and I schlepped my luggage down ourselves. Fortunately, I had gone out of my way to make sure it wasn't too heavy, so it was fairly easy to manage with each of us taking one bag.
After settling in at my room, which is really very nice, I decided to wander a bit. My ankles are a bit swollen from the flight (normal for me), so I didn't want to spend TOO much time wandering, but I had to go back up the stairs for dinner anyhow and figured I might as well check out at least a little bit of the territory. The short portion of Oia's main street that I saw is riddled with jewelry and other touristy stores that look as if they'll be quite interesting to explore even if I don't buy anything there. Fortunately, I have plenty of time for comparison-shopping for any purchase I feel I might like to make. There seem to be some tourists here, but nothing like what I understand the crowds are like in the summertime.
A little bit down the way along the main street is an amazing Byzantine church with a proper Byzantine smalti mosaic above the door and everything! There was a wedding in process, so it was neat to see that. Anyhow, after my brief foray, I went to the (extremely small) supermarket that's just down the street in the opposite direction and picked up a couple of chocolate croissants and a peach flavored Greek yogurt for breakfast, and then it was off to dinner! There's a restaurant right at the corner intersection of the main street and the turnoff for Aris Caves that Christa had recommended on our way down, and I can see why she did. NOM NOM NOM. I wasn't especially hungry, so I just got an appetizer and a salad. Bulgur salad with olives, fresh cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers. Green onion tarts in a lovely, delicate phyllo dough crust. Glass of dry white wine. Exquisite caldera view. WIN! So, I watched it get dark from the restaurant's terrace, since this wasn't exactly a "mind-boggling sunset" kind of day. Partway through my meal, I got to watch a lovely thunderstorm in the distance that illuminated all of the islands in the center of the caldera. I wish I could have caught it on film, but alas, my reflexes (and my camera's reflexes) just weren't quick enough. In the middle of enjoying that show, I got to enjoy another one as well--someone had bought fireworks to shoot off after the wedding was over. That was unexpected and wonderful, but again, I missed catching it on film (or in this case, on memory card). I might have kept wandering for a while after dinner, but it started raining lightly just before I finished my meal and I thought it would be more prudent to go back down the stairs before they got too slick with rain. This was a good choice, because they were already a bit on the slippery side. I took them very slowly!
I note that Oia does not believe in street names. This will make navigation...interesting. But this is a wander-around kind of vacation, so it's all good if I wind up lost and off the beaten path. Fortunately, I have a good sense of direction and am generally able to un-lose myself fairly easily. :-) Christa has promised me a map of the village for tomorrow.
Christa has also informed me that she has 8 cats. Eight, ocho, huit, 8! She's officially more of a crazy cat lady than I am! I have already met several of them and made particular friends with the orange tom. I have been strictly instructed not to let them in the room, and not to feed them people scraps or give them milk. Dutifully I have agreed to this even though being able to let them in my room would have been cool.
So anyhow, back to why I am awake. We just had the most amazing deluge-style thunderstorm (clearly a friend of the one I was watching during dinner, since that one rolled through not long after I got back and was considerably less intense--just intense enough for me to decide not to play on my computer then). That brought me out of my deep slumber, but the thing that woke me up completely was the undoubtedly bedraggled cat outside my door yowling to be let in. Boo to being a hotel patron who behaves, because I reallyreallyreally wanted to let the poor thing escape the rain, and it seemed pretty evident based on the length of time the cat spent yowling that many others have ignored the "no cats in room" rule in the past. In any case, I am totally awake now (for the time being, at least), because this room is a VAST ECHOING WASTELAND when there is an exceptionally loud cat directly outside my door.
But without further ado, just because it was gray didn't mean I wasn't going to start taking pictures right away! Accordingly, I share these gems with you. I'm sure I'll retake these shots once I have a sunny day--here's to hoping for one of those tomorrow--but that will be easy since they are all views from my hotel room door and my terrace. Enjoy!
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Oia from the left side of my terrace
The caldera from my terrace (the dark island in the middle is the volcano)
The view from my front door