Santorini conclusion

Yasas,

   We’ve had a lovely day here on Ios and an all too short visit.  Dozens of people have arrived on the ferry but most are off to Chora Village at the top of the hill.  We like it down below in the quiet harbor.  We did motorbike to Homer’s tomb and I took a hike along the island shore while Randal worked hard changing the oil and making sure the engine was perfectly happy.  To paraphrase a famous kitchen magnet, “If the engine ain’t happy, then nobody’s happy.”  Tomorrow early we’re off to an anchorage off Milos and then a one night passage to Kefki and then another one night passage to Finikounda so probably no emails for a while.  But I think you might be in overload from me just about now so that’s probably okay.

  This email is the tale of our hotel room escape. 

Ru

Doramac

Santorini Sunset and Morning Escape

We actually arrived in Santorini just before noon on Tuesday and left Santorini at 9:20 am Wednesday; a very short visit indeed.  Santorini has wine vineyards and olive orchards and probably lots of quiet corners, but we didn’t take the time to find them.  The ferry schedule didn’t allow for that.  It was the 9:20 am ferry Wednesday or wait until afternoon Thursday.  So we made a big deal of the one sunset we had and I have lots of photos of that.  And there is a photo of the infamous door that wouldn’t open, the metal grille that Randal bent to try to reach the door handle, and the window we ultimately had to climb out from. 

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Restaurants line the rim of the hillside walk and we picked one early enough to get a good spot.  Pasta, grilled veggies, red wine (chilled?) bread and olive oil. 

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It was quite windy and as the sun went down, quite chilly.  I wish I’d worn long jeans and a wool sweater and hat!  The woman in the little sweater kept wrapping her arms around herself.  She must have been freezing.

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It was after 8 pm when I took this photo of the sun just starting to set.

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Fira changes colors reflecting the sun

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Mystery woman and Randal, though one profile photo reminded me of our pal Sharman.

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Not sure who she was but she was a great addition to my photos.

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Even in B& W

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Sunset watchers lined the walkways.

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It is said that at Oia you can actually see the sun touch the water, but we couldn’t here at Fira

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Walking back to our “room.”

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We ate an early lunch at the Terpsi Music Café where the waiter was very helpful.  We asked hotel prices along the caldera and 200 Euro was the answer, about 175 Euro more than we wanted to pay.  We were then told his boss had rooms below the café, but still with lovely views and one would be 50 Euro. 50 Euro was okay and we paid when we agreed to take the room.  No receipt or anything so maybe a little odd. Also odd when we booked our ferry tickets later in the day and the tourist officer asked our hotel and we showed thecafe’s card.  She was surprised as she’d not heard of it.  Hmm.

  It was your basic dorm room except for the balcony with the really good view and the free wifi so we took it.  It was certainly clean and good enough and a great location.  The bathroom access was out on the balcony like when we visited Charmaine and Linda at their island home and the bathroom was off the porch with a lovely view of the lake.  Take note of the steep steps, they go down, down, down.

So we came back from watching the sunset and after some work on these emails we went to sleep as we needed an early start in the morning.  Thankfully there was no coffee maker in the room or this story would have been very sad as we would have dawdled longer before trying to leave.   We had to catch the only 8 am bus from Fira to the port to catch the 9:20 am ferry back to Ios.  The only ferry that day! We woke about 6ish and got ready to leave and go find some breakfast but, alas, the hallway door wouldn’t open.  We have no idea how it had gotten locked or why we’d been given no key. Across from our room was a storage room and perhaps someone had visited it and then locked the hall door.  Randal tried everything, nothing worked; but wisely refused my suggestion to tie sheets together and climb out the window.  We banged and pounded and banged and yelled and finally woke the folks in the room further down the stairs.  Or at least one of the guests who came out but spoke no English and had no clue really what to do.  We yelled down to the donkey men when we saw them coming up the hillside.  No luck there.  Then a young oriental woman heard us and called down from the hillside path above but she spoke little English and also had no real way to help as no one was in the café to speak with.  We asked her to find the police and off she went somewhere.  Then we banged and yelled and banged and yelled and woke more guests downstairs thankfully one of them a strong young man.  He came up and was able to catch Randal who could then climb from the window.  Not only were the stairs too far to jump, but the steps were narrow and descended sharply making a broken something very possible if we’d fallen.  Then Randal and the young man both caught me, and I have to say I was really scared as it was a long way down if it hadn’t worked.  The time of our escape was 7:15 am  amazingly giving us time for a quick breakfast before boarding the bus.  The bus was on time and the ferry was on time so we had no time to spare during this crazy escapade.

  I’m honestly not sure what we would have done had the young man not been there.  Or if there had been a fire!  We were locked into that hallway with no fake TV stunt person to actually kick down the door.  Back on DoraMac I found a contact email for the café and wrote to them.  We’ll see if they answer.

   During past vacations I’ve been locked in bathrooms as have several folks I’ve spoken to recently, Jane and Collin from Hydeaway  being 2 of them.  And my college roommate Eileen and I got locked in the stairwell of the Boston John Hancock building on Bunker Hill Day and had to walk down a dozen or more floors.  And Randal and I had to let ourselves out of our pension in Istanbul but could find the correct key behind the reception desk to do that. I guess in the Eurozone  they must just expect everyone to sleep till noon.   In this situation, at the least, we might have missed the only ferry that day. The worst case scenario we would have had to use the sheet trick in case of a fire. I do remember seeing a red fire alarm pull and I think some red fire extinguishers.  I was tempted about the red fire pull but it didn’t look so much as if it would work and the consequences of it working  weren’t so much better.  The gods must have been watching over us to have that young man in the room below.  Next time we’ll think to ask for a corridor key.

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Louvered shutters did open and the windows to the left were our balcony.   One certainly wouldn’t have to worry about anyone breaking into the windows from below.  The door that wouldn’t open is to the right of the windows.  And adventure hopefully never to be repeated. 

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I call this one, “what happens on Santorini, stays on Santorini.” 

We saw these three very pleasant young men on the ferry from Santorini back to Ios.  As we were leaving I asked what part of the States they were from.  (They had no tell-tale southern, New England Brooklyn or mid-west accent that I could tell.  Actually they were from the mid-west;  they were from Chicago and were travelling before returning to work and school.

Santorini 1

Yasas,

   This morning Randal and I rented a motorbike to tour the island.  We climbed and climbed and climbed and came to Homer’s tomb.  Maybe it’s really where he is buried or maybe not.  Who is to say either way.  Ios is a lovely island filled with terraced hillsides that Randal says indicates a much larger population once lived here.  It would take that many people to build all of the terrace walls and to need all of the food those terraces would have produced.  We saw the tame landscape on Nisyros.   This afternoon we’ll bike back up the hill to Chora Village which really doesn’t come alive until 5 pm.  I walked there yesterday, up the stone steps and it was a lovely walk around the very quiet town.

   This email is about Santorini.  I have an odd set of photos as you will see.  The following Santorini email will show our catching the sunset show and our escape from the “café room hotel.”

Ru

    For Randal ferrying into the caldera was probably the highlight of our trip to Santorini.  For me it was my wonder around Fira actually finding my way back to the small beads shop I’d spied earlier in our day and then finding my way back to our “room under the café.” And watching the crowds gathered for sunset over the caldera was pretty fun too.  But after the quiet charms of Simi, Nisyros, and here in Ios harbor, we really were quite overwhelmed with the hordes of tourists swarming over Santorini.  At least 3 cruises ships were in the harbor at all times.  That’s great for folks on those ships and we had a lovely chat with two semi-retired nurses from near New Castle, England who were from one ship.  But it was too much hubbub for us and we stayed as short a time as ferry schedules would allow.

“Minor eruptions have been the norm in Greece’s earthquake record, but Santorini has bucked the trend – and with attitude – throughout history. Eruptions here were genuinely earth-shattering, and so wrenching that they changed the shape of the island several times.

Dorians, Venetians and Turks occupied Santorini, as they did all other Cycladic islands, but its most influential early inhabitants were Minoans. They came from Crete some time between 2000 and 1600 BC, and the settlement at Akrotiri dates from the peak years of their great civilisation.

The island was circular then and was called Strongili (Round One). In about 1650 BC a colossal volcanic eruption caused the centre of Strongili to sink, leaving a caldera with high cliffs – now one of the world’s most dramatic sights. Some archaeologists have speculated that this catastrophe destroyed not only Akrotiri but the structure, and eventually the essence, of Minoan civilisation

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/

“Fantastic, fabulous Santorini deserves all the superlatives. Even the most jaded traveller succumbs to the awesome drama of this surreal landscape, relic of what was probably the biggest eruption in recorded history. That you share the experience with hordes of other visitors is inevitable. Embrace it all.

The caldera and its vast curtain wall of multicoloured cliffs is truly awesome. If you want to experience the full dramatic impact it’s worth arriving by a slower ferry with open decks, rather than by enclosed catamaran or hydrofoil.

Santorini is famous for its spectacular sunsets. The village of Oia on the northern tip of the island is a hugely popular sunset viewing site because there is an uninterrupted view of the sun as it finally sinks below the horizon. From farther south down the caldera edge, the last of the setting sun can be obscured by the islands of Nea Kameni and Thirasia. Take your pick, however. You can enjoy most of the sunset from almost anywhere along the rim of the caldera, especially if you want to avoid the sometimes feverish crush at Oia.

The main port, Athinios, stands on a cramped shelf of land at the base of Sphinxlike cliffs and is a scene of marvellous chaos that always seems to work itself out when ferries arrive. Buses (and taxis) meet all ferries and then cart passengers through an ever-rising series of S-bends to the capital, Fira, which fringes the edge of the cliffs like a snowy cornice”

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/greece/cyclades/santorini-thira

http://www.aboutsantorini.com/history.html more museum history

Our ferry from Ios was scheduled to leave 7:20 am.  We left 9:30 am, that particular ferry line being not so “on time.”  But it was smooth and short, about 80 minutes.  Entering the caldera was exciting but the sunlight made photos hard to take.  I turned this one sepia to show more details of one town up on the caldera’s hillside. 

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Ioa, the tip of the caldera, is Santorini’s Key West.

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Fira town where we stayed with the main harbor below and the hairpin turned road up.

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Throwing the lines at arrival in Fira where the whole street was lined with “tourist info/hotel/tour” kiosks  and small cafes.  One café hawker was an American by accent so I asked him for the bus to Fira town which we caught and sig- zagged our way up.

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There were a maze of streets that climbed up higher into Fira and all were lined with small shops selling the same things one to the next.

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Lots of cotton clothing for sale; these sisters were human mannequins.

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The island in the caldera and the cruise ships hovering in place.

Water in the caldera was over 1,000 feet deep in places making anchoring for these cruise ships impossible.  Instead of anchoring, cruise ships used their thrusters to hold them in position.  Fuel is used to run the thrusters which seems pretty expensive and not great for the environment.  Small tenders were used to ferry people back and forth between Santorini and the ships.

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Famous Santorini sight; Fira

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Another famous sight, sitting in a café overlooking the caldera having a drink.

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More colorful ingenious ways to wrap yourself up.

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Lots of Americans on the cruise ships; these were from Richmond. 

This photo was taken just as we were all about to enter the small antiquities museum filled with pottery and a few sculptures. We actually saw folks with B hats too, but my camera was in my pack and the narrow lane too crowded to make time for photos.

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From a cemetery of Ancient Thera (Fira) 3rd century BC.  I loved the sentiment expressed in the image.

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Early 7th century BC and early 21st century.

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The boy with the fish is an image seen everywhere.

“Painted about 1500 BC, these Minoan style murals are similar to those found at Knosos.  The best known are The Young Fisherman  depicting a youth holding blue and yellow fish and The Young Boxers, showing two young sparring partners with long black hair and almond shaped eyes.  Preserved by lava, the frescoes have kept their colour and are displayed on a rotating basis at the New Archaelolgica Museum in Fira.  Eyewitness Travel: The Greek Islands

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Photo enhanced to show the bits and fragments put together.

I read in the museum information that green wasn’t a color found in the murals so maybe that’s why the fish were yellow and blue.  But yellow and blue make green which was pointed out in the museum info so it’s an interesting question of why no green.  I didn’t ask if photos were allowed and no sign said No Photos, but I didn’t use the flash so the colors aren’t so intense.  We did watch a video showing how each of the zillion fragments was scanned three dimensionally  and then put together like a puzzle rather than have to do it all by hand.  Quite interesting.

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We opted for the bus, but one could ride a donkey part way up from the harbor. 

In the Philippines with our friend Carol we rode donkeys to a volcano caldera and Randal ended up walking half way.  These donkeys looked more sturdy and the group of them could be smelled for a good distance.   

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Or you could take cable cars.  I wouldn’t so Randal didn’t though I guess he could have cabled up and I could have ridden up and that would have worked.

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More views of Fira

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