J and I were invited to Kira and Greg Jarmer's wedding in Santorini, Greece. This is one of my favorite parts of living abroad, that taking a week to go to Greece is not that big a deal. When we told people at work that we were going to Santorini, everyone gave the same response "ooohhhh, que bonito!".
The plan: Arrive in Athens, spend 1.5 days in Athens, then fly to Santorini. Spend ~4 days on Santorini, then go back to Athens for 3.5 more days.
The flight to Athens was a rather uneventful 2 hrs. There are 2 discount airlines here, RyanAir and Vueling. Think Southwest, but without the customer service or comfort. The seat did not have enough legroom, and if you want any drinks (including coke), you have to pay. However, if you know what you are getting into, it is a good deal. The
first thing we did after getting to our hotel was to look for food, we were starving! What better food to start with than gyros and french fries!!
One thing to note about Spain... The French fries in Barcelona are bad, I mean limp mush bad. Yet somehow people continue to tolerate it. So we were very excited to see that Greeks know how to do fries. They also know how to do gyros! First impressions about Greece... it is very dirty. There is graffiti everywhere, often times the sidewalks are cracked and grungy. It is hard to explain completely, but both J and I agreed that it felt old and dirty.
The next day we went to the major attraction of Athens, the Acropolis and the Parthenon. It is a very very old set of structures. It is interesting to think about the fact that a few thousand years ago Socrates and Plato and Aristotle wandered some of these same roads and stood in the same spots. But then... you see that the Parthenon i sunder construction, and that the symbolic Caryatids (the first known time that artistic sculpture and support architecture were combined, which was very interesting) are replicas, with the real ones in the museum and under restoration. The beauty for me is in seeing these things and marveling at the fact that they lasted for 2000 years, not that there are fragments of them left, and a plaster replica sitting out there. Sidebar: There was a brit by the name Lord "sticky fingers" Elgin that apparently came in to Athens and stole tons and tons of marble sculptures. Many of these are on display today in London. The Greek government has asked for them back, but the response has always been "There is not an appropriate place to display them, so, for now, we'll just keep them here in London". Well, now the Acropolis museum has blank spaces with nametags ready for them , but I guess London still wont give them back.
Because I am a fool, and the price was better, we booked a 5:30 am flight from Athens. Off we went for the airport at 3 am. We were on the same flight as some of the other people from the wedding, including Sharmeen (or, as I like to call her, Sharmesean Cheese) and her boyfriend, Dan. There was no real plan for the day, until 5 pm, but we arrived on Santorini at 6:15 am... so you see the problem.
The hotel we booked was a little down the road from the main part of town, a little cottage with a nice view of the beach and neighboring island, and the hotel owner was very cool. A slow rhythmic voice matched his demeanor, everything about him screamed "you're in Greece... relax...". No sooner were we getting various recommendations when Dan and Sharmeen pull up on an ATV and convinced us to rent one for the day with them. "It will be 3 euros more than taking a bus to the planned activities" Sharmeen says, so... away we go. On the island of Santorini, it seemed like there were buses, motorcyles, ATVs and a few rental cars, and that's it. AWESOME! It was so much fun driving around the whole island. We went from the northern corner, all the way to the southern corner, seeing beautiful hillsides, the famous caldera, a white sand beach, a red sand beach, and a black sand beach. We drove up to Ancient Thira, and while it was closed, we did decide to do some random yoga poses.
We also went to see a beautiful sunset at a local winery.
The island and the views are very pretty. That is absolute fact. The thing that got to J and I was that there is about 10:1 tourist:locals population. So everything is manufactured for tourism. It feels a bit fake. Fun to do once, nice and relaxing mostly, but not our travel style.
Headed back to Athens:
Here's the part of the trip where I made a grave mistake planning the trip. I thought "Athens, one of the oldest cities in the world, there should be tons of things to see and do there, we'll definitely want more time". Turns out, Athens is good for ~2 days of exploration, then people go to the countryside or the islands. Well, we already had hotel booked, so we stayed in Athens. We still cant figure out why, but everything in Greece was DIFFICULT. We had a hard time with the trains, we had a hard time getting to our hotels, getting around, finding any information online, wireless internet in all 3 of our hotels was a pain, etc.
We mostly spent the time wandering through the city, going to cafes and reading, as well as enjoying a new favorite discovery, natural fruit juices, whole fruit blended with a bit of ice. Not a normal juice, not a smoothie. Quite delicious and refreshing, banana was my favorite, though peach and apple were pretty good too. We found some more good gyros and greek salads, and for the first time maybe ever, really enjoyed baclava, and it's improved counterpart, kataifi (rather than being sheets of phylo it is more like spaghetti sized strips that give it a nice texture).
I also managed to get a day of diving in, about 30 miles south of Athens. The water there is so much clearer than San Diego, and it had really nice underwater canyons and rock walls.
The attached pictures are of some silverfish and a star. The dives were very nice and pleasant, I definitely enjoy the med.
Many of you will notice that I did not mention the protests in Athens. There was violence the day before we left Barcelona, and violence the day after we returned, but everything seemed quite peaceful during the times we were there. Maybe my perspective is skewed from the "indignados" here in Spain, but it seemed very similar. I heard they ratified a new government, but they are still inching closer to default.
On the list of European countries to visit, I am glad we went, saw Athens, ate some gyros, went to the islands, but I dont have a huge desire to go back soon. There are so many other places to see and things to do, a place needs to be pretty spectacular to get me to go back.
