After we were dropped off at the tour operator office for Upper Antelope canyon, we walked as fast as we could to our rental car that had been baking in the parking lot, and made a dash to the office for Lower Antelope canyon tours.
When we went to check in, the tour was just about to start. Good thing I dropped off the ladies to find parking. By the time I made it to the office, the tour started. After walking a 100 feet with the group realized that my iPhone was missing. The tour guide said "sir, if you leave the group now, you cannot join again!". In two minds the whole time, tried to put the iPhone off my head and decided to enjoy the tour with the SLR.
Did take a few photos with San's phone. Fortunately it had just dropped below the bags in the trunk. So all was well.
The lower antelope canyon looks even more amazing because you wouldn't expect a small gap on a rock side to open into such an amazing place!
This one is even more mind boggling than the upper canyon. The features look the same but the colors and swirls and light show within the canyon walls is amazing. The paths are also a lot more narrower at places and you are better off watching your head at all times!
No video for this tour.. but plenty of pictures. The tourguide and SIL became art directors and we ended up doing a lot of posing, to add to the fun!
Nature galleries..
We walked back to the car. The guide was telling us about the one plant that grows everywhere in the area that the Indians use as morning tea and herbal supplement for all ailments!
We took a short break at the tour office and took pictures in front of the murals..we had not had a break for food or restroom since leaving the hotel in the morning.
They were all smiles after the tour.. This was just for the photo. We were glad to make it back to the hotel room to finish the leftover idlis, tamarind rice and thayir sadam that was waiting for us in the fridge.
No wonder the kids refused to come with us on tours these days. The very sight of those tamarind rice, idly and thayir sadam packets makes them run.. it is just a question of time before they pack the same thing and drag their kids along to national parks..
Strongly recommend the lower antelope canyon if you go to this area. Do NOT miss it! Given a choice of either canyon, pick this one..
We had one more tour for the day.. that in the next post!
On our second day in Santorini, we had booked an all day tour of the island. If you have only one day in Santorini, just do this tour. Apparently this is not news. There are cruise ships that dock in Santorini. The tourists get off the ship and go straight to this bus tour.. almost a 1000+ people. Puts a huge surge in the population at breakfast time as some of them try to grab food before getting on the bus.. (same thing happens when you get dropped off!).
So to beat that, we went for an early breakfast and waited for the bus to pick us up. They were on time and off we went. Viator really rocked this tour! Recommend you book this well in advance like we(San) did! She got 110/100 for booking this!!
My own Blue Angels.. they all looked so pretty and happy that I was glad to be at their bidding for anything they asked for..
We started with a ride along the rim to see the caldera to the ancient city of Akrotiri.
This is one of my best clicks of San on this entire trip.. so including it in the blog as it will get printed as part of the blog book.
There were two options given the time we stopped there:
a. walk half a mile to the red sand beach and walk back (part of the path to the beach had caved in and was dangerous)
b. walk right out of the bus stop and see the excacation site of what was probably Atlantis before the volcano covered it.
We decided to go to the beach with half the group. The other half of the bus went to the site. There is also a nice cafeteria outside the site and good restrooms.
It was already hot and bright. So me and Jr. bought blue sunglasses to match everything else..
we learned that all buildings had to be blue and white in Santorini or they are fined!
Spent 15 minutes in the beach which was really nice.
I went from "not getting the memo" to the Bluest guy from head to toe over the two days!
this is the caved in section of the walk.. you have to cross this to go to the beach. if you are not able bodied, don't risk it and block the rest of the folks trying to make it into the beach below and back!
Even the locals were proud of my blue at this point!
A pretty girl I saw on the beach..
Then we walked back. We still had 30 minutes. So I decided to make a run for it and also see the excavation site while the rest of them walked back.
The run wearing wet Bata chappals paid off. Rushed to get tickets and walked through the entire site while clicking pictures of the boards and the site and made it back to the bus with 1 minute to spare. The rest of the folks were giving me the look, but once I explained that I saw both.. they were impressed!
The excavation site deserves a post in itself, but given that my blog backlog is growing.. have added a slide show of this massive complex. This is mind blowing. 2 storied buildings which date back 8000 years ago. Someone is doing something wrong in our history books.
Look at the pictures and you will start wondering why our timelines are messed up!
A video clip of this segment of the trip..
After this we were off to our next stop.. this was a 10 hour thing which ended up being much longer including the pickup and drop off. .
As the day went by it just got better and better..
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..
If there was one place that came to the top of the list on the Europe tour, it was Paris. The kids have been wanting to go see the Eiffel Tower and see Paris with dreamy eyes for at least a few years now. Many of their classmates have visited Paris over the years and they were itching to go..
It was surprising that they allowed us to start the Europe tour in a place other than Paris and waited till day 9 of the trip to go see the sights there.
Day 9 came and we were on an all day tour of Paris which started with two hours at the Louvre. The tour covered three famous ladies including the Mona Lisa and three hallways and galleries. The Louvre being huge, this was like a trailer for a movie.. a two hour trailer!
The Louvre was amazing. The entryways, the grand staircase below the glass pyramid, the hallways, the water fountains! (yes, they were a contrast to the Palace of Versailles where one could easily faint of dehydration), and the amazing art work were a treat.
We also were fortunate to have a great tour guide for the day. This lady knew what she was talking about and paced things resaonably well.
We saw the Mona Lisa and took a selfie. There was a huge crowd just to get to take a selfie.. We did the "engaththu kaararum kutcherikku ponar" shot with the Mona Lisa.. I never realized the actual painting size was so small!! Once the guide told me that this was different from previous portrait styles in the day, I humbly bowed and moved on..
I was amazed by some of the art that I did not know about before.. the paintings were amazing as were the sculptures..
This one piece with the sunlight on the marble made the whole thing surreal.. how a person could sculpt something with marble like this is beyond me.. truly amazing.
The rest of the art looked vaguely repetitive because we had seen them at the Vatican or Uffizi or Vechchio museums or we had just seen the same stuff at the Versailles palace the previous day.
Here are slide shows from the Louvre Visit..
We were rushed to see as much as possible in two hours and were happy to be rushed. We absorbed what we could, told ourselves that someday we should just do a one week tour of the Louvre and walked out with the rest of the group.
It was time to go on a boat trip on the Sienne to see the Eiffel tower!
The video that captured the entire days trip!
The video has the entire day 9.. will be breaking the other places we visited as separate posts..
Friday, July 5, 2024 at 8:54PM ;)
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