Santorini, ahh, Santorini!

August 18, 2010 (Adam here)

We are in Santorini!! Finally, a place where we have been able to chill for a few days (not to mention, a place that we are LOVING!). We were in Athens for two days checking out the sights before we made our way to the island of Santorini. After the hot 7 hour train ride from Meteora to Athens, we found a very decent hotel ($55 Euro per night) that we were happy to rent (even if everything outside the hotel was a little sketchy) which included air conditioning as well as a private bathroom. Excellent!

We decided to go to a travel agency to try and put together a schedule before we did anything else. Ultimately we need to work our way over to Turkey as we have a flight out of there on Sept. 1. Our thought was to check out a Greek Island or two, then hop on over to Turkey and “jam with the Stones!” –Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Ok probably won’t ‘jam with the Stones’ but regardless, we do need to work our way over to Turkey at some point.

We knew we were traveling in high season and that Europe would be our greatest expense, but we didn’t know that this week was the ‘busiest week of the year’ in Greece. A girl named Efi at the travel agency was extremely helpful and very friendly in trying to put together a package (yes Gurst, I said package) for us, however, the package was way out of our price range. Cathy and I decided to take a chance and book a ‘Super Fast Ferry’ over to Santorini for the next morning, hoping we might find some place to stay when we got there.

After we booked our ‘super fast ferry,’ we looked online to see if any place might be available for us to stay (in hindsight, it would have probably been smarter to find a place to stay, THEN book the ferry, but that’s kind of how we roll). As it turned out, we did find a place in the beach town of Kamari, which is on the east side of Santorini. We had no idea what our place would be like, but the price was right and the reviews were good, so we booked 3 nights; after the many ‘not so clean places’ we have stayed, “What could possibly go wrong?”

Well, we are here now and it’s AWESOME!! We are truly on the beach (ok, 3 meters away), our room is SAWEET w/ air con, private bath, clean, and a real double bed (not two twins pushed together (although two twins pushed together….ok I won’t go there). There’s a beautiful pool, and a bar (basically swim-up bar). There are TONS of GREAT places to eat, an open air cinema, ATV/moped rentals, many different tours, and sunsets that are said to be the best in the world! How’s $75 per night sound? KAW!

Once we got to ‘The Boathouse’ (our place), we grabbed a bite to eat (on the beach) then jumped into the very refreshing ocean. Oh, life is good! There is one piece of sad news; my wedding ring fell off somewhere in the ocean and is gone; I was/am very bummed about this. I have NEVER had any issues with it falling off before; I was getting out of the water, looked at my hand and it was not there 8(

We have been chillin out for the past four (we booked an extra night when we arrived) nights and have been enjoying some down time; it was needed as we have been in constant motion for the past month.

Cathy and I decided to see the island by way of 'Quad Runner'.  We rented a fairly new 150cc (not very fast, but that was ok with Cath) machine and took off on our tour. Driving around Santorini can be very confusing and we got lost on more than one occasion. We thought we were headed towards a few proclaimed 'amazing beaches' (which I am sure they were) but ended up on top of the highest peak on the island (which wasn't necessarily a bad thing).  We drove to the oposite side of the island, weaving in and out of traffic in hopes of reaching Oia (pronounced 'eea'). This is said to be the premier spot for viewing the sunsets on Santorini.  However, we were there during the middle of the extremely hot day and were in desperate search of water.  Dripping with sweat, we made it to Oia; we successfully made our way down the 283 (or so) steep stairs to the small port and we were greeted by an amazing bluish/green ocean. Just around the bend of the port was an incredible spot where quite a few people were enjoying a cool swim and jumping off 10-15 foot cliffs into the ocean, it was so refreshing! 

After we enjoyed the ocean for about an hour we decided to head back [I should say that we were about 45 minutes from our hotel on a LONG desolate road].  On our way back on the quad, we were enjoying the breeze (because we were sweating again from ascending the 283 or so stairs we came down earlier) when we ran out of gas.  What! Yes, we were out of gas.  I stayed with the quad while Cathy headed out to find a gas station; she ran into a couple of super friendly Greek guys who took her to the gas station and then drove her back to where I was with the quad.  Extremely grateful, we thanked them and we were again on our way.  As we were headed down the hill, we saw many cars coming towards us with a few flashing their lights; this is when we realized we were going the wrong way on a one-way road-oops.  We turned around and from that point on everything went smoothly as we made our way back home. 

Once back at the hotel we jumped in the pool, relaxed, then went to eat amazing Chinese food (the BEST green curry we have ever had in our lives!) Can't wait to eat in Thailand!

We leave by ferry for the island of Kos (which is just off the coast of Turkey) at 12:30am on Friday; we will hang there for a couple of days before making our way over to Turkey. We are excited to see another new country; we here great things about Turkey.

More later, Peace!

Meteora, Greece

Kalambaka, Greece (National monument, Meteora)

August 12-13

We arrived around 1:00 pm to the small town of Kalambaka, located directly east of Igoumenitsa in the northern center of Greece. Sleepy and slightly disoriented, we got off the bus and looked around and noticed a sign, Hotel Astoria. Located less than a block away, we walked up and were greeted by a very nice Greek gentleman and his wife who provided us with an air conditioned room for a couple of nights as well as a wealth of great information about the area. They had been living in Kalambaka their whole life and running the hotel for the past 40 years. The hotel felt like a monastery-it was clean, quiet, peaceful and serene and we were subtly surrounded by pictures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

That evening, we headed to the town square to enjoy a dinner of Greek salads, beef and chicken syrtaki and some Greek white wine. After dinner, we went walked around town, talked to a few friendly locals, enjoyed some traditional baklava and picked up our laundry from a local dry cleaner who cleaned and neatly folded them (and they smelled amazing).

The next morning we woke and walked downtown to catch our bus to Meteora. While waiting, we enjoyed seeing the local farmers market of vendors selling fresh tomatoes, watermelons and cucumbers, grilling corn on a BBQ, handmade quilts and paintings being sold – you could feel the small community of Kalambaka.

We caught a bus up to Meteora, or “suspended rocks”; it's one of the world’s most unique national monuments. Monasteries (6 monasteries today) were built to serve as a peaceful place for monks and nuns to follow the teachings of Greek Orthodox. While perched up on rocks pillars to deliberately make it difficult to access, monks built their monasteries by using long ladders to access and hoisting building materials and people up by ropes, nets and later, by a unique pulley system, see our pictures.

Today, there are roughly 4-6 monks that are still practicing in this area. Most of the monasteries serve as a museum for tourists to better understand the history, teachings, paintings and life as a monks as early as the 14th century in this area. At times, you can hear a bell ringing from a distant monastery. It is a place of great beauty and both mentally and spiritually refreshing and I definitely recommend a visit.

If you are looking for a place to travel, I definitely think you should consider Greece!