I’m lumping a couple of days together to cut down on the separate posts. I have a busy couple of weeks ahead and I’m three weeks behind on my blog! 😮

I had a lot planned for the third day on Santorini. Wine tasting, exploring a city, two beaches, ruins, and the lighthouse. It was a lot of traveling around the southwestern part of the island, and we’d need to rent a vehicle.

As someone with a 2 AM alarm at home, imagine my surprise when I woke up and it was 10:53 AM. I freaked out that the morning was already wasted, and that breakfast ended in 7 minutes. I ran downstairs and the owners were so nice about us cutting it so close. Yet another point for Villa Maria Damigou! We enjoyed another awesome breakfast with a view of the caldera, and decided to start setting alarms so this wouldn’t happen again.

We finally got going just before noon, and set out to rent a quad. Quads are super popular rentals. They go fast enough on the roads, they can take a little bit of a beating, they have storage, and they let the passenger enjoy the ride or navigate without having to hold on for dear life.

After we had signed the papers and paid, they informed us that we weren’t allowed to take it to the southwest past of the island due to supposed washed out roads. MAJOR bummer. That’s where the lighthouse and White Beach is. So, scratch those activities.

I also decided to skip wine tasting, as it was already past lunch time when we got on the road. Another bummer, but at least I had already tried one local wine at dinner the night before.

We headed to Pyrgos, which is a small and beautiful city built on a hill. At the top of the hill lies the ruins of a castle. Wikipedia says the Venetian castle used to be the administrative center of the island. It’s more of a local city with very few tourists.

While exploring the ruins, we noticed another beach on the east side of the island by the airport. So, off we went to Monolithos!

It was breezy and really choppy on the beach, and that’s probably why there weren’t as many tourists around. The breeze made me a little cool, so I stayed on shore. The choppy water made for bad visibility in the water, so the snorkeling wasn’t any good.

We got back on the quad and headed back across the island to Red Beach. I’ll say the best thing about the quad is the parking…you can put that thing anywhere!

It’s a short hike to Red Beach across volcanic rock, then quick drop down a hill to the water. The water was still cold, but I clenched my jaw and went in anyway!

The snorkeling was even better here than in Kamari! The fish were a little bigger and more colorful. I thought I took a really sweet underwater video of me diving after fish, but apparently I never pressed the start button on my camera. Boo. 

The plan was to go to the Akrotiri ruins, which is a prehistoric city with an excavation site. To cite Wikipedia again, the city was apparently buried in a 1627 BC volcano eruption and is possibly the inspiration for Atlantis! We only had about an hour at that point before we had to head back to return the quad rental. We also had the other island ruins planned for the following day. It didn’t make sense to rush through history, so we ended up skipping out.

It was a good choice, because the sun was getting low and the ride back to Fira was COLD. We returned the rental with only 30 minutes to spare, then ran to the main walkway to catch the sunset. That made three breathtaking sunsets in three days.

We opted for a quick and quiet “take-away” dinner, and grabbed some Mediterranean food for the room.

The next day was our last on Santorini. We had one more beach to explore, along with a hike to the Ancient Thera ruins. Our flight back to Athens was in the evening.

We got another late start, and by the time we stored our luggage in Fira and caught the bus down to Perissa, it was after noon. We started the hike up to Ancient Thera, which was a beautiful 1.5 miles uphill.

The ruins are really neat. I kept trying to imagine that the remaining stone foundations used to be houses, the theater, and the town square.

The view up top was incredible. We had hiked from Perissa on the south-ish side of the mountain, but there’s also a road down to Kamari on the north-ish side. There’s a full 180° view of the royal blue Aegean Sea.

Check out the video I hastily threw together of the ruins:

We headed back down to Perissa and realized we wouldn’t have time to swim. There was a hippie vegetarian restaurant I’d read rave reviews about, so we walked through the adorably laid-back town toward our lunch spot, called Tranquilo.

I spotted the Crayola colored chairs and heard Bob Marley before I even saw the sign confirming this was indeed Tranquilo. YES! This is my kind of place!

If you read one of my first Greece blogs, I wrote about how meals in Europe are enjoyed and can take hours. In America, we tend to shuffle restaurant patrons in and out efficiently. Neither is right nor wrong, it’s simply a cultural difference.

We actually had a time limit with this meal – we had a certain bus to catch back to Fira, had to retrieve our luggage from storage, catch a bus to the airport, and check into our flight.

We chose to sit at the bar, thinking it would be easier to flag down the bartender to order and get the check.

I think that caused confusion. The bartender took our order, but they were out of what we wanted. A couple of waitresses ended up coming up to us at the bar, but never took our order. I think the bartender thought they did and never checked. Haha, our inability to eat a meal at a restaurant in less than two hours was laughable at this point. When we finally got our food (delicious quinoa and yogurt), we had to scarf it down, hunt down the cash register so we could immediately pay, then start majorly speed-walking to the bus stop.

For the record, the staff and food at Tranquilo are amazing. Everyone was friendly and helpful, I was just stressed about making the bus.

We were half a block and around the corner from the bus stop with two minutes to spare.

Then the bus drove by.

Noooooooo!

Up to that point, buses ranged from pretty much on time to mostly late. Just our luck that the one bus we needed to make left a few minutes early.

To kill any suspense, yes, we did catch the next bus back to Fira, got our luggage, and made the next airport bus in time.

After the 45 minute flight back, 40 minute bus to Athens city center, and a 10 minute walk to our next Airbnb, I was beginning to realize how exhausting traveling was and how much I missed having a car.

It’s unfortunate I was so tired, our Airbnb seemed to be in a very lively neighborhood, with locals and tourists alike walking the streets and enjoying a late evening meal on restaurant patios. If you’re wondering how the nightlife is in Greece, ask someone else, I never experienced it!

One thing I did do before going to sleep was take a photo of the unobstructed view I had of the Acropolis from the rooftop of the Airbnb. It’s crazy to think people live there and see that every night!

 

TO BE CONTINUED…