Greece: Santorini Sailing

We mentioned in our last post that the original attempt to take the sailing trip was canceled due to a freak cyclone hitting the island. Winds were over 60mph and the whole island was a mess. While we were witnessing the storm from the far south of the island, our hotel on the north got pummeled as well. Our hotel room door lock broke when the wind blew the door in and the fencing by the pool broke off. One of the heavy wood lounge chairs ended up in the pool.

We were able to re-book and take our trip two days later.

Found on the internet

Prior to our vacation Hotel Ikies in Oia sent us a great email full of information about Santorini that included some tour options. After combing through the choices we decided to book with Santorini Sailing. One of their excursions was a semi-private sunset cruise that included a dinner on the boat. According to the literature we were going on the same tour featured on The Travel Channel, TLC, Food Network, etc. Sounded nice.

The tour price included round-trip transfer from the hotel; or a nearby meeting point. On our second attempt we had Adonis for a driver, a twenty-something Greek that was fluent in English with an Australian accent. We think he was the owners' son (the owners are of Greek decent from America and Australia). He kept us entertained by DJing our trip with current hits. When we arrived at the port we were divided between two boats: Americans on one, all other nationalities on the other. Our catamaran was a mix of pairs: mother/daughter, younger married couples, babymooning couples,  and us. We were offered drinks: a horrid Greek pilsner or white wine. Apparently red wine was not an option since their upholstery was white.

After setting sail we moved to sit on the front of the boat. This gave us the best view and allowed us to have more time in the sun as the air chill was creeping up on us quickly. This also got us wet as the wave action was still pretty strong. Time to put the big SLR camera away and rely on the GoPro.

We departed around 3pm and dinner was served at 5:30. In-between, we sailed by the Red Beach, White Beach, some pretty cliffs, and the Venetian Lighthouse. Then we made it to the volcano and got to swim in the hot springs. This time of year the definition of hot was maybe 3 degrees higher than the typical water temperature. The water was freezing! We didn't hang out in there too long. We left the hot springs area and anchored off an island where a hermit lived.

The dinner portion of the sail was very good. 12 of us worked our way through salads, shrimps, chicken, pork, etc. It was some of the best food we had in Greece. The rest of the sail was concentrated on moving slowly towards port and awaiting sunset from the chosen vantage point. Not to complain, but since this was billed as a "luxury" trip they missed the boat (ha ha) on dessert (they didn't have any) and champagne at sunset. We had a great view of the sunset with the exception of a big ferry cutting across the landscape at an inopportune moment.

It was a long drive back to Oia. Instead of hitting the town we decided to take showers, finish the backlog of wine we had in the room, and enjoy some episodes of Pawn Stars. It was a great day overall and a perfect way to see Santorini from another point-of-view.

Here is some video from the trip.

Greece: Oia on Santorini

We flew from Mykonos back to Santorini. We were on a German airline named Condor. The most outstanding thing about Condor is their safety video that is filled with American stereotypes. It was a fun watch! We were lucky enough to arrive about 40 minutes early. But, since we had a prearranged ride, our car was not there to get us until a few minutes after our scheduled arrival.

This portion of the trip we were staying in the town of Oia which on the northern tip of the island. Our car ride was about 30 minutes from the airport. As luck would have it we arrived at the hotel just as sunset was ending. Nuts! We were able to catch just a bit of it, but we were not able to get to the cameras in time.

We stayed at Ikies Tradtional House and had a fantastic time. The staff was so good at helping us out with every need and the room was spacious. Our accommodations here were more traditional Greek style vs. the luxury-resort look of the Mykonos Grand. In a previous post we pointed out that Ikies was not in the exact location Tripadvisor had led us to believe it was - we were the second-to-last building farthest from town.

From a jaw-dropping view standpoint the hotel's location can not be beat. So what if you have to walk 20 minutes to eat or drink or shop........

We quickly settled in and started our trek to town and to dinner. The town of Oia is long and narrow. There's one main walkway the pedestrians use and just a couple of streets for cars. We had to fight the crowds and buses leaving town (now that sunset was over) and push our way upstream through the crowded pedestrian walkway to get to our destination.

Our hotel manager suggested we try Skala. It had a nice terrace looking out to the water and we lucked in to a table at the edge. Holly ordered a pasta dish and Dave another octopus dish: this time pan-sautéed in wine sauce. Tasted fine at the time.........

After dinner we walked the streets some more and found a nice rooftop bar, Pelekanos (Pelican), that would be a perfect place for a future sunset dinner. As an added bonus their homemade house red wine was actually good and reasonably priced!

The next day we ventured back into town to take in the sights in the daytime. We wouldn't do too much since we had a scheduled sunset cruise with a 2pm departure time from the hotel. But before we were to do all that we had a great breakfast that was delivered to our room. Since we were staying on the lowest level by the pool most of our town view was obscured by bushes, but our view to the sea was perfect.



As we started our walk towards town it was apparent Dave wasn't at 100%. Too much coffee (since we finally had actual press pot brewed coffee vs. a concentrate)? Did last night's octopus come back to bite him? If it was food poisoning, this was the hot/fever phase starting. We managed a quicker-than-desired tour of town in favor of letting things settle before our boat trip. We headed back to the room, but still managed to get some decent photos around town.

We're saving the boat trip story for another post, but here's a summary to help the timeline move along: we rode almost an hour to the dock after picking people up along the way, a freak storm hit the island, boat ride cancelled, re-booked for another day.

Dave was holding up ok during the whole 2.5 hours in the car during the boat fiasco. We arrived back at our hotel to find the pool railing (blue fence in the breakfast photo) snapped and went into the pool and that the wind blew open our room door and broke the lock. We ordered a couple of beers, hung out in the room while the man fixed it, and caught several episodes of American Pickers, Pawn Stars, and Storage Wars Texas (only English TV available). We prepped for dinner even though Dave was feeling a bit dicey. As we left the room the rain came back and we decided to bag it! The long walk to town would not be fun. Room service and a movie rounded out the evening.

The next morning Dave showed some other symptoms typical of food poisoning. Since our day was unscheduled we decided to hang at the hotel and save his energy for dinner and souvenir shopping. While this sounds like a bummer, we actually enjoyed sitting at the hotel. A few floors up from our room was the shared terrace for the hotel. We sat up there all day and enjoyed the sun and cooling breeze. When a manager found out Dave was sick she went and made him mint tea - her grandma's remedy for stomach illness. We were very happy on that terrace and even chose to spend time there later in the trip when Dave was feeling better vs. going into town.

The trip to town was a success. No incidents or accidents. Dinner at Pelekanos was great - even Dave's specially prepared bland chicken and rice - and the sunset was awesome.

Typical crowding in Oia's walkway

That night was our last trip into town. The next day, Saturday, was our make-up cruise day and Sunday was our departure day. We had the time to go into town, just not enough will. The view from our hotel combined with the perfect blend of sun and breeze kept us captive.

* Dave's doctor said it likely wasn't food poisoning given how long the symptoms lasted. More likely scenario is cross-contamination with Santorini's undrinkable water or other virus.

Greece: Visit to Ancient Delos

When planning our trip to Greece we knew we wanted to see at least one archaeological site tied into Greek mythology. Lucky for us the island of Delos was an easy 1/2 hour ferry ride from Mykonos. We had never heard of Delos and were surprised to find it was a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most important sites of ancient Greece.

History of Delos (according to Dave): Back in ancient times Greece had a tourism problem. Everyone wanted to go to Athens to see the Parthenon or Delphi to see the impressive temples and Oracle, but hardly anyone was visiting the islands. One day some scholars were chatting at their version of Starbucks and realized the birthplace of Apollo, son of Zeus, wasn't mentioned anywhere in their lore. They told their friends in the tourist board and the government. In need of a new tourist attraction, the government revealed to the public that Apollo was born on Delos - an island that was originally held underwater by Poseidon using a big chain. He cut the chain so it would rise to the surface to give Apollo's mom a safe place to give birth. To make the story more plausible the government purified the island by removing all bodies, building a massive temple, and banning death on the island. This created much buzz and many people visited Delos from all over the world and then decided to live on the small island with no water supply or natural resources.

Eventually Delos became a major center of commerce. Many multi-storied homes with fancy frescos and mosaics were found. Shops lined the streets everywhere. Temples honoring all sorts of gods were built and free worship was allowed (provided that all citizens participated in the annual Apollo Festival). In the last of the BC centuries the island kept getting hit by pirates and Romans. Eventually the whole population was wiped out. Folks came to their senses and realized Delos was not a great place to live without all the urban amenities. The island remained uninhabited, which helped to preserve the ruins for the French archaeologists that started their excavation work in 1873. For more information check out Wikipedia.

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Our trip to Delos had some problems. We bought a tour package which meant once we arrived on the island we would have a guided tour. Our guide coordinator had to have been on her first day of the job based on how clueless she was. We disembarked the ferry at 10:30 and were told the boat leaves at 1:30. Our tour would be slightly delayed because they were very busy due to the cruise ship traffic that day. "Go to the museum and your guide will meet you there at 11:15". We trekked to the museum, which occupied us for about 15 minutes. Our guide eventually showed up at 11:45. Instead of getting right into it and heading to the ruins, she pulled us to the side of the building to give us a 20 minute history lecture. Now we had less than 90 minutes to tour the site. Details were glossed over, she told us to read the brochure and look up things on our own in the map. Horrible.

The island itself was great. There were lots of well preserved ruins and mosaics still intact on building floors. Portions of statues were still standing and the words on buildings could still be read (if you know Greek). We weren't able to see everything thanks to the poor handling of our group, but we got the idea of what the place was about.

Dave forgot to pack a hat so he picked up this beauty in town

On the boat ride back we had the cheapest beers of the trip - 2.5 Euros.