Lots of steps, and some lying around...
Trip Start
Apr 16, 2006
1
27
39
Trip End
Jun 07, 2006
Santorini,
Greece
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Anyhow, the view is nice the whole way so as my calves were burning at least I had beauty to soothe me. Ha. That and the fact that I stopped for a Mythos beer at a taverna halfway along. ;) I also got to see what a lot of the other hotels look like. Some are fancier than mine, but I still like mine plenty. I wasn't ready to leave it tomorrow at 7am (and if I left later in the day I would arrive in Athens at 11pm, which I don't want to do) so I even booked it for another night so that I could relax here tomorrow too
01 There are worse ways to wake up...
. I'll be heading for Athens on Thursday now.Anyhow, I digress... the main area of Fira was filled with tourists who had escaped their cruise ships, but I still enjoyed it. Yeah, Santorini can be touristy but my hotel is away from all that. And I really enjoyed window shopping this afternoon. They have all sorts of little jewelry and clothing and art shops everywhere. And best of all? I'm not in Turkey so nobody is yelling "Helllloooo! Where are you frooommmm? What is your nammmeee? Where are you going? Will you be my customer!?" after me from every direction. It was so quiet and relaxing in the shopping areas in comparison to what I became accustomed to in Istanbul that I actually was able to stop and LOOK at things without the desire to flee. Wow.
That said, I didn't buy anything. Maybe tomorrow.
I had a nice lunch at a cafe with a gorgeous view. As is typical, they added 2 Euros to the bill as a "cover charge" for the view. When I was younger that "if you see pretty things while you eat you must pay more" thing really upset my backpacking friends and I... mostly because my backpacking friends and I were all poor as dirt and usually didn't expect the cover charge so we felt cheated
02 The views on my way to Fira
. But now I know to expect it and I just think, "I can always order something less expensive. I want the view so I'll pay." I mean, I'm in Santorini for God's sake. I will soak up the view for all it's worth.Unfortunately, the opening soundtrack to today's tasty lunch was 80's Amerian power ballads... starting with "Take My Breath Away" from the Top Gun soundtrack, leading straight into "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and moving onto other equally stomach churning tunes of my college days. Songs that (as some of you reading this no doubt recall firsthand) made me ill even then. I began to almost long for my days in Turkey where they didn't play bad American music. (Ahhh, but then I remembered that a lot of Turkish music sucks pretty bad too.) But then they played Michael Jackson singing "Ben," Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" and Blondie singing "Heart of Glass"... so things turned around quite pleasantly musicwise. I finished my lunch with a smile on my face and a happy end to the threat of 80s power ballad-induced nausea. :)
After my walk I basically just laid in the sun and stared at the volcano and the ocean until a bit before sunset when it became windy. Tomorrow, I will probably lay around some more. And then I might lay around. And possibly after that? I will lay around. Or not. I haven't decided.
