Santorini - A blue and white beauty!

The previous post on this series is here..

We used Agean airlines to go from Athens to Santorini first flight out. Given that Syntagma square was a good 40 minutes away even without traffic, we woke up real early to get a pre booked Uber in Athens and made it to the airport on time.

Santorini has a small airport that flies to Athens and other islands on small planes. It is an interesting island in a lot of ways. At one point it was considered as a possible candidate for the last city of Atlantis !

We had booked an Airbnb in Fira which was literally 10 minute drive from the airport. Our landlady had arranged a car for us and she greeted us at the place. It was small, incredibly cute and a walk down the slope across the McDonalds on the one main road in Fira. 

We put our travel bags down and wandered around the street a bit. There is a nice bakery right next to the McDonalds which had amazing pastries and juices, not to mention hot cocoa. We ate a brunch at one of the shops on the main street right next to the donkey statue in the main square. 

Then we had to make our way down the hill to the Caldera walk and boat ride tour.. again prebooked through Viator! There were three options to go down. Climb down ~700 steps , go on a donkey ride down or take a cable car. We took the cable car option.  Walking or donkey would have meant smelling donkey poop all the way down. So we got two way tickets for the cable car.  

Also the family had told me to bring something blue and white to wear. However my idea of blue was not Santorini or Greece blue! It was navy blue. When I came out ready to go, everyone was giving me the "what is wrong with this guy?" look! So to stop looking like a guy who didn't understand basic colors, we shopped for a linen shirt right outside the cable car entrance. This is the costliest shirt I have purchased to date in my life's shirt purchasing history. At 30 USD, this shirt actually ended up being a great wardrobe addition. It is light and seems to breathe well.. and also dries fast! I did not know all this at the time and was only experiencing sticker shock. For a guy who shops exclusively in Sri Kumaran in Mylapore or wears Bikram Yoga 60 day challenge T-shirts which were all earned the hard way.. this was an interesting experience! 

Did I mention the 30 dollar shorts that was also bought to match greek colors? 

Moving on... now that we were all Santorini ready, we went down and had to wait a good hour before our boat showed up. There is not much to do once you go down the cable car. Most of the eating places are closed. There are gelato shops. So we had some and took pictures.

Once the boat showed up, we were off to see the Caldera. Hiked that mile and a half to the top wearing bata chappals! Tip for you.. wear hiking shoes for the hike but take your sandals for the boat ride!  The hike was nice and pleasant. The guide told us all about the Caldera called George that erupted and blew a big hole in the middle of Santorini. We got to stick our hands into a few vents which were still very hot and fuming!

That is the tallest point.. a small pillar from which you get a 360 degree view!

Then came the kicker. We were told at pre booking that novice swimmers would still be able to go swim in the volcanic waters as part of this tour and everyone will be given floating noodles. When it was time to do that though, the guide said we had to jump off the boat and also the water was 50 feet deep and we had to be decent swimmers to go the distance. The boat was not allowed to get too close to the sulfur brown waters per some regulation! So San and me stayed on the boat and watched the experts (our kids included) go to the volcanic water for the swim like monkeys that have just tasted ginger (something got lost in that translation from Tamil to English on that one). You can see it all in the video!

The water outisde was 14 C and the sulfur water was only 20 C.. warm, not exactly hot. It was supposed to be medicinal. When the kids came back they cursed us for sending them there. The smell was bad, it was cold and not easy to breathe in that smell. "What were you thinking?".. we said our plan was for all of us to go.. but we were not expert swimmers! In any case, they forgave us after a few minutes knowing they did something we couldn't and that we actually wanted to do it!

We have to rectify this swimming situation. Time for me and the missus to start taking some joint swimming lessons till we can swim in open water. We are missing out one too many times..

Once the boat got back,we waited again and got back on the cable car and made our way up. 

Did laundry and had the pleasure of drying clothes outside...The place is windy and clothes dry in a jiffy.. so washers and no dryers!  Hadn't done that in a while! 

It was late evening and beleive it or not, there are vegetarian options a plenty in Santorini compared to Athens! The wife and kids got some veggie mediteranean bowls and I went back to the airbnb and made Maggi noodles for dinner.. added some nice pastries to go with that from the bakery! 

We were all talking about how beautiful the slopes and buildings were.. inspite of it all being blue and white! It was very different from anything we had seen in recent past..

A video highlight of our first day in Santorini! 

Given we had woken up early, we slept. early.

The next day was going to be the highlight of the entire trip. An all day tour of Santorini island from 7AM to 9PM with 7 stops! 

That has to be broken into a lot of little blog posts..