Santorini

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you my last and final Greece post - Santorini, or as Kaydree calls it Santorino (which I will obviously call it from here on out).  I guess you could say I saved the best for last…well, sort of.  Since I tend to highlight all of the best parts of our trips, I thought I would change it up for this one and just keep it real.  You see, Santorino is the place you see on postcards.  It's always the place that is filmed in movies that take place in Greece.  It's that place in your dreams that you will one day go if you ever make it to Greece.  And it is definitely somewhere on your Pinterest travel board.  So like you, I may have built this place up a little bit in my mind before we got there.  But let me just give you a quick run down of what actually happened when we got there:

1st - 6 hour LOOOONG ferry ride, because Santorino is FAR from Athens.  FAR.  And the flights?  Well, they cost just as much as my ticket down to Greece did.  so. un. fair.  But because this place where dreams come true is on the other end of this long ferry ride, it's somehow tolerable.  Until…

2nd - I felt a little queasy after getting off the boat.  We had to catch a cab to Oia because even though the port is in Fira (the other town on Santorino) Rick Steves told us not to waste our time anywhere but Oia.  So pretty much the next thing I know, it's after midnight and we are in this cab and the driver just happens to be driving like a rabid crazy bat on crack, oh yeah, and we are winding up this huge mountain and I think I'm going to DIE.  Then…

3rd - We got to our perfectly lovely little villa in Oia - all white and blue and Greece-ish, and we lay down to crash on our bed and it's horribly uncomfortable.  Oh well, fresh start in the morning right?

Our villa in Oia - cute on the outside, not so cute on the inside.

4th - Of course I wanted my husband to be Jason Bourne and zip me around this island on a scooter.  Who wouldn't want that?  So this Greek guy (who can barely speak a word of English but thinks he speaks really well) brought a scooter down to our hotel and gave me and Ry the basics of scooter operation (we think - we can't understand a word), to which we just smile politely and nod.  He tells us to ride the scooter down to his rental place and pickup 2 helmets.  We rode for all of 5 blocks and we were swerving all over the place and I remembered that time my sister almost died and was in a coma from a motorcycle accident... and I thought I was going to DIE.  That's 2 near death experiences in less than 24 hours.  So I say sweetly to Ry, "how about one of those 4-wheelers over there" and he says, "we're getting a car."  So as we are passing all these cute couples having the best time ever of their lives on 4-wheelers, we are riding around Santorino in this hot little number…

As I am snapping the picture of this so called car, Ry says, "You're going to blog about not riding on a 4-wheeler or a scooter aren't you?"  hehehe. 

5th - Is it really possible that we brought the netherweather with us from Holland?  Overcast.  I was going to wear this cute cover-up with my swimsuit…

...and instead I had to change into jeans and a jacket.  So here I am pouting that the weather is awful and my husband isn't Jason Bourne…

I am very happy to tell you that there is no "6th"!  Just as I was wondering why the heck everyone thought this place was so darn special, the clouds parted, the heavens opened, and the sun shown right down on me for the rest of our trip.
We went to a black sand beach AND a red sand beach, both consequences of a former volcanic eruption on the island.  They were unlike anything either of us have ever seen.  We soaked up the sun, snacked on the awesome Greek food, lounged by the pool, and took in an amazing Greek sunset...

And of course, we wandered around the lovely streets of Oia and felt like we were walking through a postcard.