San Antonio befriends Santorini

We arrived in Santorini safely after an eight hour ferry ride. With occasional bouts of nausea and it being incredibly cold the first half of the journey it was fairly uneventful. We got into town by a bus that meandered its way back and forth basically up the side of a cliff and eventually found our way to our hotel. Jami and I were both a little worn out and cranky which called for the immediate solution of gelato or mentos, whichever came first. We found an excellent gelato stand and upon our first bite we immediately began feeling better,once again sweets work their magic!! We then proceeded to wander through the streets aimlessly with no particular destination in mind, the usual for our trip to Greece.

Our hotel, our room is in the bottom right corner. The view above is the view from the terrace over our room.

Santorini is very much a tourist destination. With streets lined by souvenir shops, jewelry stores and restaurants I am not sure where the locals hang out. We were, as usual, drawn to gazing at the jewelry in the windows. We eventually stopped going into the shops because we were so flabbergasted at the prices and nothing could really match up to the diamonds we got in Istanbul. I do have to say there were some very beautiful pieces, unlike anything I had seen before, but still way too expensive.

The start of our hike.

The best day was yesterday. In the morning we managed to meet up with the folks from San Antonio (all 17 of them) and figure out plans for the rest of the day. Most of them were venturing off to wineries but Jami and I, in the interest of being outside and not spending money, went on a hike. We kidnapped Megan and hiked from Fira to Imerovigli down to some castle ruins at Skaros then over the hills and around the caldera to Oia. It was a beautiful walk and the pictures do not do it justice. It took us about two hours to go from Skaros to Oia over lava rocks and cobblestone pathways. I thankfully had on my tennis shoes but Megan and Jami had on flip-flops, I was personally impressed with their perseverence (not a single complaint from either of them, shows you what kind of great people I am fortunate enough to travel with!). we made it to Oia and had a delicious feta cheese pizza, a greek salad and a fanta before taking the bus back to Fira.

Done with our hike and still they have smiles on their faces!!!

Jami's grandmother really wanted her to ride a donkey and there are donkey rides from the old port up the side of the cliff (also on back and forth cobblestone pathways). We walked our way down the mountain and paid an old man to use his donkeys to carry us backup. The ride itself was fun although my donkey would make wide turns on the curves and come dangerously close to the edge. I, being slightly afraid of heights, would hunker down and grab ahold of my donkey hoping he would not suddenly decide to buck me off his back and down the hill. With an occasional stop to rest, eat some grass, and once to poop (not me, the donkey) my donkey and I successfully made it to the top! We met up with the other 16 from San Antonio for a delicious meal and caught up on news from back home. It was really nice to see everyone but it would be really difficulty trying to travel with that many people.

The city of Oia (pronounced eye-ya, we are pretty sure)

This morning we had a breakfast of crepes before missing our bus down to the port and having to take a taxi (my fault). Now we are about to head to Mykonos for the final leg of our journey. As the trip winds down we are planning on doing a lot of sitting on the beach the next two days, maybe trying to figure out if there are surfboards for rent and whether I can muster up the courage to get into the freezing cold water. This has been a great trip but I thinkI am ready to come home and begin tackling my to do list in preparation of starting residency. I probably won't post much else until I get home but I hope all is well.

The castle ruins at Skaros and the view from the church at the base of the Skaros castle overlooking the Aegian and a cruise liner.

As a side note Mykonos is beautiful and Jami got to go scuba diving. If you want to surf you have to bring your own board but I did get in the water and go swimming, a personal victory for myself!! Hope all is well, see many ofyou soon!