love without rules

Opa! [part 2]

Welcome back! In my last post, I told you about the disappointing news of a shortened stay in Santorini. Would this be enough time for me to experience my own Sisterhood adventure? Would I be able to go for a donkey ride, and hopefully not fall off like Tibby?

We had a 4.5 hour catamaran ride to Santorini on Sunday. Once we settled into our hotel, the Hotel Daedalus, J, E, S, and I took a cab and booked it over Oia, one of the most beautiful places to watch the sunset, before it was overtaken by other tourists. We ended up watching the sunset as we ate dinner (toast for me) on the rooftop at Pelekanos. I really wished that we had changed beforehand, because it was quite windy and cold! Luckily, the restaurant had fleece blankets for us to use. Unfortunately, S, J, and I got colds from that night, and were sick for the rest of the trip. After dinner, we explored Oia, bought more souvenirs, and took some nighttime pictures of the breathtaking views.

Overlooking the Caldera
Sunset at Oia

Monday was jam packed as J and I got up a tad too late to take a tour around Santorini. We also couldn’t take a tour of the hot springs and the volcano, since it involves being able to swim. (Something which I have to teach J and RV to do :P ) Instead, we kind of made our own little tour and headed for the beaches - Kamari, the black beach, and Akrotiri, the red beach. We took the bus over the Kamari and spent a couple of hours there. The sand there is incredibly hot! You definitely have to keep your shoes on. The interesting thing is that the sand here, isn’t really sand, but it’s more gravel-like. Here, again, I pretty much stayed under the umbrella (gotta love those umbrellas) when I wasn’t taking pictures.

Kamari beach
Kamari beach

When we were ready to go, we headed over to a travel group and explained that we wanted to head to Akrotiri, so they had a private driver to take us there. Once there, the driver told us that we had to walk to get to the beach, which I didn’t mind. But he failed to tell us that after a half mile walk, we’d have to then climb over a mountain. Haha. But it was pretty awesome, and the mountain was actually a rusty red. So as J and I climbed the mountain, we stopped to take pictures, I took a few looking over the edge. Once hiked around the mountain, and got to the beach, we walked a round a bit. The beach wasn’t really a sit and relax type of beach, so we headed back to the hotel. Plus, we had to make it in time for our donkey rides!

Akrotiri
Looking over the edge at Akrotiri

So when we got back to the hotel, we cleaned ourselves up a bit and headed back to town for our donkey rides. Randomly, when we left the hotel, we actually ran into a man who had his donkeys with him! Poor man, J harassed this non-English speaking man to see if she could ride on one of his donkeys, and he let her… until they were blocking traffic. Haha. But we did make it into town, and climbed the stairs of the mountainside to take the cable car back down. I was able to take some pictures that could only be taken during the ride, which helped me to not freak out about how high on the mountainside the car actually was.

Village in the mountain side from the cable car

J and I ended up running into some of the couples on the tour and we went on the donkey rides with one of the older gentlemen. We waited a few minutes and decided which donkeys we wanted to ride on. J’s initial white donkey nudged mine out of the way and took off. Haha. The donkey guide told me to get on my donkey, but didn’t give me any directions. And of course, my donkey took off! I had no clue if I had to do anything to steer my donkey. I was definitely holding on for dear life though! The other scary thing was that the donkeys were walking up stairs that had hairpin turns and the walls stop at the height of the donkey, so if Mr. Donkey didn’t like carrying, he could have easily gotten rid of me! J was so relaxed about it and was taking video and chatting up her donkey. Actually, her donkey was quite the multitasker and decided to take a poop as it walked past my donkey and me! Actually, I’m really surprised at how many people decided to walk down these stairs with the donkeys because of the piles of poop, instead of paying the four euros to take the cable car down. Our donkey pack kept walking into people and we had to apologize for it - we had no control over them! As scared as I was, I’m so glad I went on the donkey ride. It’s definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity; until I go back, of course! But seriously, how many people can say they rode a donkey up a mountainside in Santorini?! That night, we had dinner with the group at the hotel. I was at least able to eat a few bites of real food. Yay!

Donkeys! Mine is the one on the left. The white donkey that was supposed to be J’s… before it ran away.
Me on a donkey!
The donkey stable (I found this really funny)
A village overlooking the Caldera
The hotel at night - beautiful!

Tuesday, we had some extra time, so we spent the morning at the Museum of Prehistoric Thira, and souvenir shopping. On a whim, J and I decided to get henna tattoos. I got a butterfly, and J got a heart wrapped with lines. Then it was time to get on a 9.5 hour ferry to head back to Athens, because of the strike and all.

Our henna tattoos

Our last day in Greece was definitely interesting, to say the least. Our tour director told us that there was going to be a peaceful protest in Syntagma Square, and that she was going to check it out because it was “Greek history in the making.” But since we were back in Athens, I really wanted to go back to the leather goods store by the Hard Rock Cafe where J got a really nice leather bag. So J and I set out on a hunt to find this store and to see if we could find those firemen we met on the first day of our trip.

We walked around the Acropolis again, trying to find the area with the store. We kept walking and walking, and ended up at Monastiraki Square. Throughout the day, we saw people (protesters) with white powder on their faces (with some research, I found out that it’s Maalox to counteract tear gas). We walked some more and soon ended up by a ginormous Starbucks. In the bathroom, I ran into a girl who was frantically washing her face, and I found out that she had been in the protest and there had been tear gas thrown. So trying to avoid the areas with the gas, J and I set out to either try to find the store and get back to our hotel. It was pretty intense since we wanted to avoid the traveling protesters and didn’t really know where we were going. For having 5 million people in the city, certain parts of Athens were deserted, and stores were locked up, which was really weird. Apparently we were a few blocks away from some of the protests, and ended up by the university, when there was a sudden gust of wind, and J and I started to feel tickles in our throats and began to cough. We were hit with reminisce of tear gas! I can only imagine how painful it is to be part of the groups who were hit with the full force of tear gas. At that point, we decided to go back to the hotel, so we asked some police officers how to get back. The informed us that there wouldn’t be any taxis around the area and that we could either walk or take the metro to get back, but that our best bet was to take the metro. They gave us directions to the nearest metro, which was only a few blocks away. J and I were about a block away from the station, when we saw a huge crowd of protesters approaching the station. Less than a minute later, 40 or so riot geared police come marching around. You bet that J and I got the heck out of that area! We walked about a mile to the next station to finally make it back to the hotel. Whew! That was close!

Protesters
Riot geared police, and me covering my face from reminisce of tear gas

That night, we ate our last dinner with the group at a restaurant at the base of the Acropolis. The food was really good - excellent tzatziki sauce, a plate of various appetizers, oven roasted potatoes, chicken, and a light dessert of Greek yogurt and honey. Afterwards, the tour director took some of us to a roof top garden of a hotel for some drinks as we watched the lunar eclipse. The various monuments we saw earlier, were beautifully lit for the night. This was the perfect way to end the trip.

The Parthenon at night
The Temple of Zeus at night

Although our last night in Athens ended perfectly, the next day put a huge damper on that. J and I had to leave by 8 am, even though our flight wasn’t until 12:30 because one of the other members of the group had a flight an hour before us. And it turns out that she had a DIRECT flight to New York! WTF?! We also found out that our flight to Montreal was delayed 3.5 HOURS! And the employees at the airport were completely useless and kept telling us that they couldn’t tell us anything until we got to Montreal. REALLY?! So not only were we an hour early because of someone else, we now were stuck in the airport for a 3.5-hour delayed flight!!

So after a 10.5+ hour flight to Montreal, J and I ran with our huge luggage through Montreal airport to try to catch a different flight home, since we definitely missed our transfer flight home. This was one of the most infuriating experiences ever because first, we were given directions to the wrong counter, and then we were told that the last flight home was leaving in 10 minutes, but that we would have to go through customs, so we wouldn’t even make it. REALLY?! Why do we have to go back through customs when all we did was grab our crap and run through your airport?! After all that, all they could do was put us in a hotel.

We waited outside in the heat for the shuttle to the hotel, only to find out 45 minutes later that we were waiting in the wrong spot! Way to communicate to each other, people! Since there were so many people waiting for the shuttle, we had to take the second one. Once we got there, and tried to check in, we then found out that the woman at the airport had double booked our name! The couple in front of us, who were clearly Caucasian and NOT Asian, had taken our room! We had to wait another twenty minutes to get our room. Three and a half hours after landing, we finally grabbed dinner with our vouchers that didn’t even cover two soups, two teas, and an entree. J and I were practically falling asleep during dinner and eventually passed out in our room, ready to go home the next morning.

After going through customs the next morning, we were finally on our way home, more than 24 hours later! Never have I ever been so glad to see a cloudy and humid New Jersey, and a dingy Newark Airport!

As I said at the way, way, waaaaay beginning of this entry, anything that could have gone wrong on this trip went wrong but these “hiccups” definitely made my trip a memorable experience, and I will always have stories to tell. I still can’t believe that I got to see firsthand the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and all of the monuments I had only seen in art history books and slides. I loved that I had spent time on three different sand beaches in the matter of 10 days, all of them with mountains/hills literally meters away. And even though I normally hate getting lost, I totally appreciated getting lost in Athens, being able to explore the winding streets of Mykonos, and climbing the stairs in Santorini to take a cable car ride, let a lone a donkey ride up a mountainside! And of course, the tons of shopping I did on this trip!

Even with the debacles, I would totally go back to Greece; maybe just not any time soon, not until things calm down a bit. And, now that I’m a bit familiar with Athens, Mykonos, and Santorini, I would totally be up for going without a tour group. I would definitely take direct flights to and from home, as well as flights between the islands; those boat rides were waaay too long.

Thanks for the memories, Greece! Hope to see you again soon!

J and me at Akrotiri

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Opa! [part 2]