We docked at Santorini at 5AM, with the island shrouded in the early morning darkness. I woke Ted up, and we scrambled down to the landing bay with our gear. The hatch opened, and the docking became a scene from Saving Private Ryan, with everyone fighting to get to shore first. There were men holding signs and shrieking to promote their hotels and hostels. Having read our Europe on a shoestring book, we decided that we wanted to stay in Perissa beach, and generally have a good laze. No one it seemed had a hotel in Perissa, and as it's impossible to climb the cliffs at the harbour, you have to get some hotel operator to give you a lift up to the summit (and ultimately to their hotel). We stumbled around, praying to God in hope of finding a Perissa-based hotel, and then, as if sent by God, a small, squat, smelly man approached us and said:
"Perissa Beach?"
"Ooh! Yes!"
"Very good. We have swimming pool, good rooms, TV, on the beach..."
"Ah, what's the catch? How much?"
"Ummm. 10 Euro"
"Well...I guess that will be...sufficient" Ted turned to me "What are we bloody waiting for? Let's go!" The squat man pushed us into his mini-van, accompanied by Rochelle and some other Americans, and we sped up the cliffs and into rural Santorini. We chatted to the squat man and his accomplice driver for a while.
"American?" he asked us
"F*ck off!" was my response
"English actually" said Ted
"Your name?"
"Will"
"Ed"
"I am Jordan". This was fascinating stuff. Jordan and his friend brought the mini-bus to a halt outside a very comfortable building in the town of Perissa. We went inside, where we received our room keys, and waited for everyone else to get theirs. We sat in disbelief as some of the Americans tried to haggle with the owner for this morning's use of the room. By now, I was so tired that I would pay the full price just to sleep until 10 (after all, that was about 5 hours sleep - the same as our overall tally for the last 4 nights!), and the Americans were haggling for the sake of about £3 saving - what pricks. We went to our room, and slept long into the morning.
We awoke easily in the basking sunlight at about 11:30, ah! Looking around, the room was fantastic. We had 2 comfy single beds, a large colour TV (with Greek channels!), a shower-room, and a great view over the town. Not bad for the equivalent of about £6.50 per night. Our stomachs rumbled, and so it was time to grab some breakfast. On our way downstairs, we met Jordan's accomplice, the owner of the hotel. His name, apparently, was John. He charged us only 5 Euros for our morning's slumber, and 10 Euros for the other nights we were here. We decided to stay indefinitely. We walked outside to explore, and to our surprise, we found a supermarket across the road, accompanied by a bakery/cornershop, how convenient. On our street there was also: countless tourist offices, internet points, a water park, lots of cheap fake stuff shops, restaurants, bars, an Irish pub, and of course the famous black sanded beach. We took some giant donuts for our brekky, and headed for a moped salesman to hire...erm, a moped for the day. The blokey was hard-core, but very nice, and I rode as a passenger with Ted, whilst Rochelle took her own. We sped up the hill to fill it up, whilst Rochelle took her time. A little later, she pulled up to the petrol station, with a giant gash down her leg, and blood dripping from her leg.
"I dropped it on my leg. It doesn't hurt" The sight was so gruesome that I fainted. When I woke up, I pondered what it was that gave all of our bad motor-luck to the people we rode with. She took the decision to go the pharmacy and get her severed leg cleaned up. Then there were 2. We made our way slowly to the beautiful town of Fyra, capital of Santorini. I must say that the scenery was absolutely stunning, and the whitewashed walls added to the sheer awe-inspiring imagery of the cliffs and expensive hotels. A quick lunch of burger, milkshakes and crisps at a high-class restaurant, and we explored the town for a further two hours. The small alleyways are lovely, mingling effectively with squares and cliff-side walkways. Alas, we would also drive to Oia.
We didn't have a map, therefore followed the signs and took the scenic route. It took about an hour to get there (quite a feat considering the size of the island). However, I began to experience hay fever for the first time, and my eyes watered like mad as I gripped Ted around his waist, hoping not to fall off. It was still about 4 o'clock, and as there isn't much to do in Oia but see the sunset, so we returned to Fyra to check our emails. We sent some to the TJs to let them know where we were, and invited them to come our here and find us...
We returned to Perissa, tired and in need of a swim. As we did so, we saw Rochelle walking normally and smiling. Her recovery from her injury seemed to be quite effective, and we invited her out to dinner later that evening. We found the cafe del Mare, and treated ourselves to feast of Greek food for the astonishing price of about £4 each. We also got large glasses of beer, and chatted. We were however shocked to see the speed with which Rochelle, matching, if not exceeding our own gargantuan efforts. Respect. In much need of a rest, we retired to bed at about 10:30, and fell instantly into a deep and peaceful sleep.
Yawn. Rumble.
"Ted! I have the hunger! I might die!"
"Calm down Will. Let's go and have..." he looked around with suspicion "...an English breakfast!"
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!" I screamed, and clambered downstairs arse-naked.
"Will! Put some bloody clothes on!"
"Ah, right. Sorry Ted." With all that sorted, we made our way down Perissa's main street and sat inside a cafe where the Greek owners called each customer 'love' and 'mate'. We had hit gold.
"Two of your finest English breakfasts please, you Greek tuffs!" demanded Ted. We ate them as if we were back home, sniff, where everybody knows our names! We then decided, as we had nothing planned, to take the famous volcano tour. We met up with two ex-pink palacers, the girl called (I can't remember) 'Rambo', and her boyfriend who, in all seriousness, was called 'Rummy'. Hahahahahaha! He had the uncanny resemblance to 'Flounder' from the film National Lampoon's animal house, so we interspersed our conversations with him with phrases like:
"Oh boy, is this great!" and "Flounder!" But that's just us being 'crayzee'. You can probably see what the tour was like from the photos, and we got a bit bored, and made a film script around it, so enjoy the crazy photo captions. The film was called 'Volcano - A Pauly Shore Adventure", and it involved Pauly Shore holidaying in Perissa Beach, and being entrusted a volcano for preservation purposes. David Hasselhoff, jealous of Pauly Shore's ownership, formed an 80s army, and took it by force, becoming King of the volcano, and condemning Pauly to a lifetime of anonymity with Steve Guttenberg. Anyway, for those of you interested, the tour involved: climbing the volcano, swimming in the lukewarm springs and eating lunch at an island full of crafty restaurateurs.
When we returned, we simply had some supper and went to bed, as were still recovering from our newly found exciting lifestyles.
That morning, we received an email from the TJs, explaining that they were on Santorini, staying outside Fyra. We told them that we would meet them in Fyra at 3 o'clock. We were so excited at the prospect of seeing those loveable scamps again, that we almost peed our pants. We had another English breakfast (OK, so we had started treating this trip like a complete and utter holiday - hedonism all the way please!), and did a bit of shopping for fake things. We both bought trendy baseball caps, and I capped our wee spending spree with the purchase of a very convincing fake England Away football shirt. An hour or so on the beach led to me accidentally breaking the mobile phone (by swimming with it in my pocket), thus leading to a Teddy tantrum. After another hour or so, he recovered his cool, and almost all was forgiven. We were about to head into Fyra to wait around for the TJs, when a bus approached, with a small and furry head poking out of the side
"Will!" it was Dani. The TJs leapt off the bus with great relief, we all hugged and wept, and then went to the beach. To tell you truth, the beach was awful. It was covered some sort of straw-like seaweed, and it blew around everywhere. We decided that this really wasn't worth our while, and so we went round all the fake-stuff shops again. Dani had well and truly destroyed his towel, and after hearing us blathering in about the reasonable sized football towels, he purchased a Liverpool one, just in spite of the Arsenal ones that Ted and I had purchased earlier in the day. The little git. He, adopting his Dick van Dyke English accent, began to sing his own version of the Liverpool anthem 'You'll never walk alone'. The Toronto version must have its differences, as he warbled in his Canadian tones:
"You'll...never...walk...alone...again...erm..." We then used the hotel pool and beat them at basketball (!), followed by a gyro and beer session at one of the local restaurants. We returned to the pool, and the TJs unanimously agreed to move from Fyra to Perissa the following day. We decided to go to Oia to watch the sunset accompanied only by another few hundred people. We took the bus there and waited. We bumped into yet another ex-Pink Palace girl, who was a Californian, and therefore quite annoying. Her name was...um...jam. Jam kept telling Ted and I that she was living in Perissa and perhaps we could go out for a drink and then perhaps get a taxi together. She also pronounced things in a very silly way, i.e. acropolis became 'acripilis', and Mykanos became 'Miycanoes'. It was clear that we wouldn't be joining her for a drink. The sunset was perhaps one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen (probably 3rd behind Arsenal winning the double, and Jennifer Love-Hewitt), so it therefore prompted lots of picture taking.
The journey back to Perissa on the public bus system was quite horrific. Ted somehow fluked his way to the back of the bus, whilst I was squished into the anal cavity of a man with an arse the size of a Volkswagen.
(based in Toronto)
We got John to take the mini-bus to Fyra at 10AM to pick up the TJs from their hotel, and they clambered in, one by one. One thing worried us though. The Jazzman seemed slightly perturbed by the previous evening's activities.
"But...I like jazz..." was all that we could get him to say. The Judge explained to us that last night, as they were walking back to the hotel, the following conversation took place:
Judge: "Hahaha! Today was fun!"
Dani: "Yeah, almost as fun as the first night at the Pink Palace!"
Jazz: "Hahaha! I like Jazz!"
Judge: "Yeah, remember Andrew? You got so drunk that you said you liked country music, and that you hated Jazz!"
Jazz: "What? I'd never say that...very funny!"
Dani: "No no no! He's telling the truth, you said that Miles Davis was a cad!"
Jazz: "...yeah.... whatever."
Judge: "Andrew. It's true. You said that."
Jazz: "..." he looked around "...oh my god...excuse me...I feel queer..." He then ran off in sobs of tears, whimpering "But I like Jazz. I like Jazz!"
He was still obviously shaken up by the truth. He spent the whole journey jibbering in the back of the mini-bus. We arrived back at the hotel, and dumped him into a room, where he rocked back and forth.
"Excuse me fellas. I don't feel too good today. I think I'll stay here and think about what I said". With that, Ted, Judge, Dani and I went off to get some breakfast. Ted and I had the usual full English breakfast, with the non pork-eating Judge and Dani choosing to eat breakfasts of the continental variety. We decided on two things: firstly, that we would spend the day re-exploring the island, and secondly that we would leave on the ferry to Ios the next day. We couldn't all hire mopeds, so we hired possibly the sexiest automobile on the planet. It was instantly renamed the Slut Mobile (after our Citroen at home). Unfortunately, the blokey behind the desk decided to give us a dud that wouldn't go up hill without smoke bellowing from the engine. We managed to make it to the famous 'Red Beach', but that was much as it could handle. Incidentally, Red Beach was the biggest pile of poo that I've ever set my eyes on. Stretching to about 30 metres long, it looked as though it had been dumped there by the Santorini Tourist Board (the sand wasn't even very red). Ted was having trouble enough with the whole concept of a left-hand-drive car, let alone a left-hand-drive car that didn't work. We returned on the downhill slope towards Perissa, to change cars, and set back out to Fyra. We all checked our emails, ate some Gyros and then came home after a quick game of 'chicken' with the local 50-seater buses. We spent the afternoon at leisure in Perissa, where we ran into Robin (another ex Pink Palacer), and he joined us for the afternoon. We told Jordan the bad news that we were leaving the next day, and broke down weeping.
"Oh no! My darlings! Why you leave? I teach you Bulgarian swearwords!" Indeed he did (incidentally, I think 'Chichis' were breasts and 'Puska' was for female genitalia - see, this website is educational in a small way!). We ate supper that evening at the ever-reliable Cafe del Mare, where we were attacked by a small sandstorm halfway through our meal. Then something remarkable happened. On our way back to the hotel, we passed another restaurant, where Dani seemed to sniff the air, and then turn and look inside. He turned to Judge:
"Zack, I think those girls are Toronto Jews!". With that, he raced in and asked them. A few minutes later, he returned with a broad grin on his face, "yep!". Absolutely remarkable. Judge then told us the ins and outs of Toronto Jew girl spotting. I think it was akin to:
- wearing a 'jean-jacket', Abercrombie shirt, going to Shark City on a Thursday night.
Something like that. We returned to the hotel to find Jazz in a complete state:
"AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH! I LOVE JAZZ! I LOVE IT! AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!" Judge and Dani restrained him, put him in the hire car, and Ted drove him to hospital in Fyra. Apparently, whilst there, he had sedatives injected into his backside (something to do with dehydration apparently). We returned, and spent our last night in Santorini watching the worst film ever made on Greek TV (I think it had a very wooden Matt Dillon in it).
We packed up our stuff and dumped it into the minibus. John and Jordan took us down to the port, where I taught Jordan how to use the word 'bootylicious' in polite conversation. We tearfully said our goodbyes, and boarded the ferry to Ios, with Jazz barely able to walk from his state of despair.
"But...I...like...Jazz"
Andrew: "..bbbbuttt...I like...Jazz....no...."