Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Happy Fourth of July!!!

We celebrated tonight by cooking a truly American feast in the apartment: bacon cheeseburgers, potato salad (which I made from scratch), watermelon, and a big peach/banana shortcake (we couldn't find strawberries).  It was amazing.  The boys came over and we all ate and then after dinner and dessert we ran through the streets around our apartment with sparklers-the closest thing to fireworks we could find.  It was so much fun, and even though we weren't at home it was probably one of the best Independence Day's I've experienced. 

We may not be done celebrating yet, we're all kind of taking a little break, but might be walking up to the Areopagus in the fancy dresses we bought earlier in the trip.  We haven't worn them out yet so it seems a fitting occassion.

Santorini was amazing (again). 

Our hotel was in between Perissa and Perivolos, two of the black beaches on the far side of the islands; it was a really nice place but kind of far from any of the towns.  We ended up renting a combination of mopeds and four wheelers to transport ourselves since we were there for four days, everyone buddied up and split the cost.  We took a night boat so we arrived at 8am on Friday, by 10am we were lying poolside at the hotel.  We spent a couple of hours at the local beach playing volleyball in the water and then getting lunch at a beachside cafe.  Then we headed back to the pool to lay out and play with the kittens that had been rescued from the roadside earlier that morning-their mother had been hit by a car-we took them in, named them, and then spent all day playing with them; it was adorable.    We had dinner at a restaurant on the beach that night and then went to bed early since we were all exhausted. 

Saturday morning, us four girls got up and went into Fira for an afternoon of shopping/exploring.  We found the smoothie place from last summer for lunch, took pictures overlooking the caldera, and bought a lot of really neat stuff.  We found the lava jewelry place where I got my necklace last year, which was really cool because their prices had actually gone down.  I got a huge ham, cheese, and egg crepe from 'our' crepe shop and then we headed back to Perissa to get ready for the night.  We had planned on taking the bus to Oia for the sunset, but we didn't catch the bus in time so we ended up going on a four hour walk through the small town of Perissa. We picked bougainvilla and put it in our hair, we found a small playground and played on the swings and bars, we met some 'Canadians', ate dinner with an Australian couple on the beach, and took the four wheelers down the beach to a Canada Day party to watch their fireworks. It was a really fun night.

Sunday was a really cool day.  We got up a bit late because we were all tired and since the Geneseo group had left that morning, our little group got on the mopeds/four wheelers and went out for the day.  We drove to the red beach first, which was really gorgeous.  The beach is made of red pebbles and is at the base of huge dark red cliffs that jut out into the water.  We swam out onto a big rock and took turns diving off, Laura and I decided we felt like the little mermaid.  We spent about 45 minutes there and then got back on the bikes and drove to the other side of the island to Kamari, the more popular black beach on the other side of the mountain that separates it from Perissa. 

The highlight of our afternoon involved all of us jumping off 30 foot cliffs into the ocean.  Yep, I jumped off a 30 foot high cliff.  It was really fun until the second jump when I lost control of my balance and hit the water legs first in a sort of seated position, so now I have huge bruises all over my thighs from the impact.  We stayed at Kamari for about 2 hours and then drove back to the hotel to get ready.  We decided to leave early and take the bus to Fira, catch a bus there for Oia, and eat dinner and watch the sunset there.  We ate at the same restaurant as last year: The Best Gyros, a little place right by the bus stop that is good, cheap, and doesn't charge you to sit down.  We actually missed most of the sunset b/c people were being slow and there were a lot of clouds out, but it was pretty nonetheless.  We walked back around to the point where we went last year, the most popular spot on the island with the best view and spent about an hour just hanging out watching twilight and evening set in over the town.  As the sky darkened and the lights went up, Oia looked like a little light up village-it was really awesome to watch.  Possibly one of the most surreal feelings of calm I will ever enjoy in my life, sitting on the edge of that big rock with Laura, Chris, John, and Adrienne watching dusk fall on the caldera and listening to Hear You Me by Jimmy Eat World.  A truly wonderful evening.  We left Oia on the 10:00 bus and went back into Fira where Amber caught a bus back to Perissa and the rest of us stayed to check out some of the clubs.  We were all exhausted so we didn't stay very long, and since Murphy's (our fave spot from last year) was charging a cover, we ended up spending most of our time at the Town Club and then walking around.  It was really fun, much better than our last club experience with that group.

Monday was our last day in Santorini, so we got up early-ish and packed our stuff, left it in the lobby since we had to check out, and arranged for the hotel van to take us to the port that night.  We decided to head back over to Kamari because the boys wanted to jump off the cliffs some more and the girls wanted to walk around the town and shop.  We were there for about 2 1/2 hours, before deciding to drive over to the red beach again so that Ryan could find this jewelry lady and buy a bracelet.  It was a really fun day, just driving around the island on our four wheelers and stopping at the beaches.  We caught the bus to the port and ate dinner at a little cafe where our waiter was this crazy guy from Georgia (the country).  We met so many interesting people on that trip, its been quite fun just talking to them as we randomly cross paths. 

Our boat left at 7:30 pm, so we got on a bit early to find good seats and settled in to watch the sunset before going to sleep.  Sunset on the Mediterranean really is one of the most beautiful things one can ever watch, in my opinion.  It was really weird to sit there and realize that the same time last year, I was doing the same thing.  364 days before, I had been watching that same sunset from relatively the same location on the top deck of our boat back to Athens after an equally amazing weekend in Santorini.  Its weird, you think maybe once in your life you will get to go somewhere that incredible, but you don't ever really think that it will happen twice, let alone two years in a row.  Its going to be strange next summer when I don't spend my fourth of July weekend on an island in the Mediterranean. 

Mike and Brian are here, so I've got to go. 

Kali nichta.

~RLM

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