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| A quaint, hard-to-reach church nestled on the cliffs below Ia |
| Glenn's Santorini Journals 5-12-02 This was our last day in Santorini and we spent our first enjoying the beach. The weather was a little overcast as it had rained last night and looked like it would rain again today. We were hoping for a good photo day. We did the usual morning routine of showering and breakfast before packing a day pack for the day ahead. Our plans were to rent a couple of scooters to get around the island. Santorini was not that big and we had heard that you could easily get around the whole island in a day or less. The rental place was on the corner just down from the hotel and was priced as good as any other. Scooters were 10 Euro per day and we had decided to get one for each of us. Upon arriving at the rental place and realizing that the weather was not that good and scooters were probably not that safe, we opted for a jeep. The jeep was not much more expensive than 2 scooters would have been. We jumped into the Jeep and took off following a path that matched one of the tours that we could have taken. Our first stop was through the town of Akrotiri and off to the Akrotiri Excavations. The excavations were of a Minoan town that had been preserved under the pumice for over 3000 years. We toured through the excavations and found it to be quite interesting. A guided tour would have provided much more insight into the town than we captured just going through it by ourselves. Even so, most interesting. We then stopped at the Red Beach for a quick stop beafore heading north. Northward we drove through Fira, the main city on the island, and Firostefani before continuing on to Ia. We had seen beautiful pictures of all of these cities but today did not seem like the best weather day to recapture these same shots. Our first stop north was actually in Ammoudi, a little port community below Ia. You can actually get to Ia from here but expect to climb quite a few stairs to get there. We walked along the coast of Ammoudi past the boats and restaurants that all displayed the fresh catch of the day. There was plenty of sea food to be had, but a little pricey for our taste. The walk along the coast gave us a chance to watch some fishermen at work and enjoy some of the colorful boats that were displayed along the coast. Next we stopped in Ia. By now we were hungry and were stopping for lunch. We were glad we did, as we ended up walking around town for over 3 hours taking some great photos and checking out the local shops. We even bought a painting from a local artist that captures Santorini that we can't wait to get home and have framed. It will be a great reminder of Greece. Ia was fabulous, and we decided that on our next visit to Santorini we would stay at this end of the island. We love the whitewashed homes with the brightly colored windows or accents. We left Ia around 4:30 pm with the possibility to stop back by here closer to sunset where we would be able to recapture some of the photos that we had seen, weather permitting. We drove back to Firostefani where we stopped to check the views for photo opportunities. The weather was not permitting many photo opp's at this point but the views were nice. We even sat at a restaurant enjoying a cold drink and calamari while enjoying the view. We then decided to head back out to Ia to see if we could capture any of the sunset. Well, again, the weather did not permit any such thing. We also asked about gasoline for the jeep as we were running low and the response was that the closest gas station was back in Fira, where we had just come from. We turned around and headed back to Fira for gasoline. We arrived in Fira around 6:15 pm and found the nearest gas station possible. I felt better knowing that we had enough gasoline to get us back to the rental place. We did not want to get stuck out in the dark on an island that we did not know that well. We also did not see that many people out on a Sunday and would not have been sure how long it would have taken for someone to find us. After obtaining gasoline, we made our way to a nearby pay phone to call our mothers for mother's day. We had arranged times with each of our mothers through emails so they would be home for us to call. I called first as my mom is on the East coast. We talked for about 5 minutes, which was all our phone cards would allow, but long enough to say happy mother's day from Greece. Erin called her mom next (Pacific Coast) and also spoke with her for about 5 minutes. It was nice to hear a familiar voice, especially our parents. The time did not give me a chance to talk to my dad but I will probably get a chance to do that for Father's day. After the phone calls we headed back to Perissa Beach to drop off the Jeep and head back to the hotel. We quickly turned around and headed back out to dinner realizing that we had a long few days ahead of us as we make our way back to Italy from Santorini. Dinner was good (we actually had Italian) before heading home to pack and 'hit the hay' before we had to be up around 6:00 am. |