Day 3 - Exploring Santorini

  Santorini, Greece
Monday, May 21, 2007

We have an eventful night. A, who is prone to nightmares, has one of those and in thrashing his arms about dislodges both the bedside table and the TV which was placed upon it. We wake up with a bang, literally. Luckily the kids are sleeping thru it all. We check out the TV only to find, amazingly, that it has suffered no damage.(Must make note of brand if we ever get a TV in our bedroom), place it back and go back to bed, A to snore and me to lie resentfully thumping him at intervals and regretting the lack of reading matter, since I'm an insomniac.

We still have cold water in the morning but manage a sluice-down (one of our longest stretches without a bath. Even when our heater broke down in France we managed to farm out our bathing for the 2 weeks it took a plumber to come repair it!) and breakfast on muesli. As always, we are behind schedule. Having planned to leave at 10 am, it is 11:30 by the time we're out the door, what with various diapers, poopy kids and their food having to be made and packed. The guys have negotiated our car rental up to a Renault Thalia, nice and dark blue and with tons of boot space which is required if you have all the luggage that I detailed out in my last post.

C opts to drive and we're off, guys in front and M and me wedged with kiddies at the back. We've only gone a few hundred metres when we find that little A's travel sickness now extends to rental cars too. A quick stop as we wildly dig around ti find:
a. candy;
b. towel to cover ourselves with;
c. wet wipes container; and
d. Plastic barf bag for him

He and I exchange places, with him now sitting by the window, with strict instructions to look out and not forward. C does a good job navigating the unfamiliar roads and about half hour later we find ourselves in Fira. We stop at a chemist to pick up travel sickness medicine for little A, on a really slopey street and dose him. We arrive in the main part of town and find a place to park, near what seems to be a park (ha ha), which has a spectacular view of the Caldera

Another view from the park

. M and I plan to hang out there with the kids while C and A are going to find out what touristy things we can do - maybe something on a boat?

M and I keep asking C and A for 'one more thing' out of the car boot before they leave until finally practically everything is unpacked and at our feet. They heave a sigh and proceed while we chill. Unfortunately the ground seems to have lots of pieces of broken glass (why on earth?) but all three kids insist on running about so M and I hope for the best and let them.We're next to a restaurant called Peubm, as far as we can read Greek, and the view would be phenomenal

The vision we carried away of Santorini

if it weren't for the fact that the famed Santorini winds are blowing even harder up here. M and I have nothing to tie back our hair with and our vision is obscured by black swathes of hair.

It does feel good to finally have the vacation under way - the previous day, at one point we had actually been contemplating flying off to another island in the north of greece or even the Amalfi coast. A and C come back after what seems a long while to report that we can take a 3 hour cruise that starts at 2 pm but tomorrow, since it's almost 1 and we're all hungry. Meanwhile M and I have been laughing our faces off, as always happens when we get together, and are practically hysterical.

We check about lunch at another Fodor recommended restaurant but that turns out to be open only for dinner so we go into Peubm,

Peubm

which it turns out is Greek for Remvi.The food is mucho expensive, especially as compared to volcano, and nothing as nice

Lunch!

but the view is spectacular. We take in the sight of the Santorini-breakoff islands and spot a large cruise ship in the bay below

the view from the park in Fira

It is possible to walk all the way down to the Caldera but the thought of doing it while carrying the two tots and the thought of the walk back give us pause. We decide to drive around the island instead, hitting Oia around sunset which is meant to be spectacular. I'm pretty keen on seeing Akrotiri which is supposed to be these pre-historic ruins that they excavated. It looks weirdly like there are snowcapped mountains at the far end of the island, and later we realise the snow is white coloured homes!

snow-covered peaks

C is at the wheel again, little A goes off to sleep because of the medicine, and we seek Akrotiri. There are lots of pointers for different beaches, but practically every one of them needs us to walk the last 1 kilometer or so, so we decide to reserve beaching for Perissa and carry on. the drive around Santorini is spectacular, reminiscent of the Pacific highway in terms of the view. We stop and A and C get out to take pictures while M and I are trapped under a pile of sleeping kids. I make feminist noises and manage to climb around little A to get out of the car and see the view for myself and take a picture or two.

Near one of the most scenic spots is a small studio with ceramic samples and A and I love anything breakable so we stop and get out to look. Spectacular replicas of ancient Greek pottery, plates, murals etc. but really steeply priced. Oh well, we shrug and carry on. A starts getting his usual holiday craving for icecream and we spot a likely store and stop for that and film. We also find nice bandanas there so M and I invest in one each so we can see a little more of Greece. The shop also has a lot of affordable ceramic ware, little 3D plaster of paris plates of Santorini and some lovely prints of photos of Santorini by Georges Meis. Kitschy here but probably nice at home. A and I and M pick out some photos, a 3D picture for A's parents, one for our home and a blue ceramic vase for our living room. Little A also spots a pair of Mickey Mouse sunglasses which we buy him, since he's such a fan. We get some yummy icecream bars and sit out on the shop porch to eat them.

Back to the car and onwards to Akrotiri. We miss the turn to Akrotiri and find ourselves heading for the red sand beach. We park there and get out of the car next to a gorgeous looking building

The church near the red sand beach

. The way to the beach seems to be over some rocks and down the other side. M is keen to pick up some red volcanic sand for her nanny who apparently collects (weird) sand, so she and I quickly hand off the kids to the guys and push off before anyone can yelp. When we crest the top of the rocks, we realise the red sand beach is quite some distance away and don't really feel like making the effort. We come back down and take some pictures with some dune buggies before heading back to Akrotiri.

It's about 2 minutes down from the red beach but it's closed to visitors for repairs. There's even a sign out front - Guarded by Vicious dogs! That's that!

Foiled again - akrotiri

We're off to Oia for the sunset before heading back. It's a spectacular and somewhat long drive for Santorini. We are lucky enough to find a good parking spot at Oia and make our way into the town. The sunset is so famous that there must be close to 5000 people perched on every available inch of space to catch it. Hoo boy, we should have come earlier. as we wander into Oia, we are charmed by its pretty streets, the interesting shops and lush green plants everywhere.

Oia

We decide that we have to come back here tomorrow morning to hand out, even if we have to skip the boat ride which I'm in any case a little wary of, with our little travelsick boy along. 3 hours on a rocking, heaving boat with someone who gets sick on dry land? I don't think so!

We squat along the footpath at a vantage point, just like everyone else is doing. The cobbled streets have a low parapet on the left, and the drop from the street is either down a cliff or into a house/ hotel at a lower level. Warning to parents - the parapets are really low so hang on to your adventurous kids. My heart is in my mouth as Little A tries to run around in his usual style. Littler a is busy doing her usual flirting with passersby, and eventually drifts off to sleep. the breeze here is really cold and cuts like a knife. M is busy feeding R's face before the sun sets. All restaurants are overflowing so there's no hope of watching over a noice hot cup of coffee.

We wait. I walk around trying to click a better picture. then we wait some more. And more. It's way past seven (the sun is supposed to set between 6:30 and 7) when we realise that was it. I've seen more spectacular sunsets from the roof of my old hostel in Calcutta! Quite disappointed and chilled to the bone, we beat the other tourists back to our parking spot and head back to Ira. The photos look a lot more dramatic than what actually happened.

The unspectacular sunset

We have chhole and rice for dinner, along with Santorini tomato salad and greek yoghurt. There are some amazingly juicy strawberries and grapes for dessert and we finally have the wine, which is pretty good. All in all, a day which has us finally melting into holiday mode. Plan for tomorrow - Oia and the beach.

the view from the park in Fira