October 26, 2012

αγαπώ Σαντορίνη

Try saying the title of my blog post. Can't do it? Yeah, that was exactly how I felt the entire trip hahaha. The Greek alphabet is just made up of symbols (which reminded me of math class) and it is difficult to actually speak it slash read if you don't actually know HOW to pronounce the symbols. I really wanted to learn how to say 'yes', 'no', 'sorry' and 'thank you' but there was no way I'd be able to pronounce it and actually remember how to pronounce it properly. Luckily, their secondary language was English. So all the signs had Greek and English on them and everyone spoke English as well! SO key!
On a side note.. My nails were so ready for the nice weather. Haha, I never thought I'd be able to paint a bright color again!! And right when we arrived to Greece, we already noticed the weather change. It was SO nice and sunny! MERPS! I couldn't wait to change into my shorts :)! The picture below definitely sums up the trip hehe definitely lovin' Greece, and more specifically Santorini, or Thira as the Greeks say :)

We landed in Athens first, and then had a transfer flight to Santorini. Why HELLO most gorgeous island in the world!!
We took a bus from the Santorini Airport to the main city, Fira. From Fira, we had to take another bus to Firostefani, where our hotel was located. I'll show you a picture of the local bus system. It was actually not hard to get around at all! And while the island looks quite large it definitely was not. You can drive from one end to the other (vertically) in about 20-30 minutes, I'd say!


After wandering around, we found our hotel (Blue Dolphin Apartments) and realized it was closed from 2pm to 6pm. What kind of service closes from 2-6? -_- a 4 hour siesta/lunch break?! I'd live here just for that!
We decided not to waste time so we just became true backpackers and lugged our backpacks around with us all day. Here is a picture of Fira from our hotel's terrace. Gorgeous right?!?

We took a little time to stop at a nearby restaurant for a little food - Greek Salad and Santorini Salad... Of course we would :) and some random honey-coated dessert that they gave us for free.
After eating and changing into proper Santorini attire, we were ready for our little adventure walk along the cliffside to Fira! We just walked along a pathway and would stop randomly to take pictures of the nice views. ...Which to me meant just walking along people's rooftops. Haha, all the roofs were flat so it was really easy to climb over ledges. It was great!! A highlight of this little walk was bumping into this older Japanese woman. She was by herself (or so it seemed) and she kept speaking to us in Japanese as if we understood her!! We helped her take pictures, and vise versa, and she was the ultimate best when she threw up her cute peace sign. We took a picture with her to remember the great moment. She was the best!!! Haha
And of course, I had to have a Nice part 2. Unless I take a picture standing on a ledge risking my life, my vacay is just not complete :P but no seriously, if I stumbled a little, I would have fallen over the cliff (like the picture above).
(Eeeeeps! The sky and the sea color is just gorgeousss. BRING ME BACK!)
Once we got to Fira, we walked around to do a little shopping in the stores and then headed to Oia to watch the sunset! I remember reading about how it's the best location to watch it, and the Internet was so right. It was amazingly nice. I guess it's a really big thing for tourists because there were even signs on random walls in Oia saying "SUNSET ---->" or whatever. We didn't really know where we were going but we found a nice little area and just watched it set. Breath-freaking-taking! The pictures definitely do NOT capture how pretty it was. It's definitely one of those things where you just had to be there.
As the sun set, the buildings slash streetlights started to turn on their lights, which made the city look so cute too!! Our cameras definitely couldn't capture it though, but here are some pictures where we tried. Haha.
After watching the sun set, we wandered back towards the bus station to head back to our town. Since we had to go back to the hotel before reception closed, we were rushing and ended up taking dinner to-go (a gyros plate - SO NOMS). The streets started getting dark, and some didn't have streetlights but thank goodness I brought my handy dandy flashlight!! So remember, if you ever go to Greece, bring a flashlight :) 
Once we checked into the hotel, we sat out on the terrace to eat our dinner and watched Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. SO appropriate.
At night, it was freezing cold. We definitely did not have the proper attire. Being completely exhausted from running around with our backpacks all day, we quickly passed out :)

- - -
Day 2 & 3 of my Greece trip will be posted later this week, featuring some donkeys and our amazing race trial run :) ...pun intended. XO
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...