Day 6: For Relaxing Times, Make it Santorini Time

I can’t do this in an hour, Joe. I just can’t. I know we got up a little late today, but this process won’t be rushed! It will be rushed. I will do this as fast as I can and I might only get to the end of the hike, but that was the best part of the day anyway, no offense to our new Canadian friends, Dami and Laurence. Ok here goes. An hour post!

Joe’s Dream

I had a dream where I was watching tv and Paul Pierce was singing the national anthem at a WNBA game. And Kevin Garnett comes out with one of those super soakers attached to a backpack. And we were in the room, like very realistic, and instead of spraying Paul Pierce he sprays this guy in the stands, this white guy in a suit and i was laughing so hard and trying to get your attention but you wouldn’t look. Kevin Garnett was also in a suit and super sweaty. Paul pierce was ALSO in a suit.

We ate a delicious breakfast of bread, Greek yogurt, Santorini cherry tomatoes, olives, and hard boiled eggs.

After breakfast we got dressed and went out walking. We headed up the main road toward Fira, the capital of Santorini. It wasn’t a great walk, the sidewalk is narrow and occasionally switches sides without warning.

There’s a lot of traffic here and a high percentage of it is made up of massive tour buses. When we got to Fira it wasn’t much better, the cars replaced with assholes. Santorini is a tourist trap. At least Fira is. We haven’t seen much of the rest of the island yet, and we did walk right into the molten core of the problem. Once you get through town though, the crowd thins out and the views of the caldera are absolutely incredible.

Imagining this thing as an active volcano is awe inspiring. The Minoan Eruption, around 16th century BC, is one of the largest volcanic events in recorded history, and the volcano was active as recently as 1950! For now it slumbers.

We kept to the walkway that runs along the edge until we saw this thing. This is Skaros Rock.

We were like, we’re going up there. If you go here, do this. It took an hour maybe, there are a lot of steps involved and even a little climb at the end allowing only one person to pass at a time, but it’s well worth it. When we got to that last part, we had to stop and wait in a little group while some people made their way down. There was another, more difficult problem but Joe wouldn’t let me do it. And there was a cowboy in my way. More great views from Skaros.

And that’s pretty much it! We walked back through Fira, saw a movie theater alternately playing Mama Mia and My Big Fat Greek Wedding all week.

There was a super hot couple that I had to keep pointing out to Joe and then later I saw the guy picking his nose while staring at a restaurant menu.

There were the lamb gyros that we finally ate. Then we were back at the hotel.

We planned the next couple legs of our trips and rented our Santorini scooters. Mine is a Peugeot Tweet and Joe’s is a Symphony SR. So we got this gem from Joe.

We left to go eat at a restaurant recommended to us by Matt Barrett’s Greece Guides, Kyria Niki’s. We ate fried tomato balls and white eggplant which were both amazing. Joe completed a Lamb Slam. Gyro, souvlaki, and on the spit.

Then we went to all four bars in Fira. Murphy’s, Two Brothers, The Highlander, and Kira Thira all of which featured a saxophone as a decoration somewhere. At The Highlander we watched live, unscheduled amateur arm wrestling.

Kira Thira was where we met our new friends. Again we sat with a couple of strangers and again, it worked out incredibly well. We yelled at each other about politics and sports. Dami seemed to think that he could sit on his high horse about the Lakers despite being from Calgary. Oh I see so you got to pick a team to root for and you picked one of the most successful franchises in all of sports!? Brave. It was a damn good time. We bid them a fine farewell and walked home. Incredibly, the ice cream shop was still open at 1:30. We swirled through on the way home. They had a flavor called Jet Black or something that was a brownie turned into ice cream. Sweet Cone is doing some things.

OK! I think that was an hour and a half. Sorry Joe. Let’s go see the rest of Santorini.