Monday, October 18, 2010

Santorini Shenanigans

Wednesday afternoon, my roommates and I were pretty bored, so we looked up ferry prices to Santorini. The tickets were pretty cheap, and the next thing we knew it was Friday morning at 530 am and we were on our way to Santorini!

We checked into our hostel, which is my future place of employment, and headed straight for the beach. We met a beautiful Albanian man who also lives in Athens, but works the summer months in Santorini. We all thought this was brilliant and have now signed up for jobs around Santorini in the summer. Can't wait!

Our hostel was having a barbeque that night and we met 20 more kids studying in Athens from America. Well two hours and unlimited wine later, we were best friends. We met some really cool people traveling the world by themselves, which sounded amazing!

The next day, we woke up to Mary banging on our door because it was time to sign up for the boat tour. We got to the dock and got in line for this pirate ship when a man told us it was the wrong one and we had to wait. We finally got on the boat and sailed to the volcano. We paid our 2 euros and climbed the rocky volcano in our sandals-clearly satisfied with our choice of shoes... It was really neat because we were able to see the whole island group of Santorini from the highest peak.

We got back on the boat and continued to the hot springs. The hot springs looked straight out of Shrek, complete with an outhouse. Also, there were goats staring at us. It was only awkward because they didn't speak english.

After the hot springs, we spent a couple hours at the island of Therasia. There were no roads so the people there either take donkeys or walk up the mountain. We decided to check out the donkey rides with these two spanish ladies. My donkey was the biggest donkey I've ever seen... it was actually bigger than a horse I think. I was laughing hysterically clinging onto my steroid donkey because Kelly's donkey would sprint up then slow down then sprint again. These donkeys were out of control and it was definitely an experience!! We felt like we were in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, or Pants for four!

After we left that island, we went back to the main island, but to the city of Oia. This is the city where the sunset is most magical. When we got there, we were told we would either have to walk up the mountain or ride donkeys. Since we had JUST ridden donkeys, we were not going to pay to ride another one. We struggled up the cliff, but it was so worth it. We got really lucky because we got the last table overlooking the sunset at a nice restaurant. It was unbelievable! There is no way this is real life!

The sunset ended at 7, and we had to be back at the bus to take us to the hostel at 7:30. We made it there at 7:10 and waited...and waited... Finally, at literally 7:33 we realized we were at the wrong place. We were on the upper level and the bus was on the lower level. We figured it would have waited 3 minutes since we were 5 out of 6 of the people on the bus... That was a bust. The bus had left without us. We had to wait another hour for a bus to the main city, Fira, and then from Fira get on a bus to Perissa where our hostel was. We made both buses successfully which was obviously a new thing for us, but we did miss our stop in Perissa. I wanted to cry but then the bus driver looped back around and dropped us off out front of our hostel thankfully!

The next day we woke up and went to explore Fira. It was such a cute seaside village! The shops were so cute, and the people were very friendly. We missed the bus to go back to Perissa by 10 minutes (typical...) and had to wait 50 minutes. We finally get on the bus and it drops us off way at the other side of the black beach. We walked for a half hour back to our hostel and JUST made it to the shuttle to take us to the port. We ended up catching our ferry on time (thank god!) and we were so so sad to leave Santorini. That's most definitely where I will be living when I'm a billionaire!

The mini fiascos we had made our adventure more interesting and we had so much fun in such a beautiful place. I really really hope I make it back there before I'm 85!

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