One last breakfast on the balcony in the hot sun (not windy today!) and we repacked and checked out of the Sea of Aegean, one of the nicest accommodations we have stayed in so far. We had trouble getting the ATV out of the parking bay - a truck and another car were trying to come into our street and it all got a bit confusing, but Dan managed to soar the ATV up over quite a crest and we were off and away. The hill to our place was a bit of a challenge, so Dan found a slightly less steep road just a little way along. Thank god! I was worried I’d fall off the back.
When we got the ATV back to the lady, we had some problems navigating the very tightly parked cars around her shop. She motioned that we should get off, and she expertly whisked it between the cars and into park. That’s how it’s done! Dan got his licence back and we were away. We left 3/4 of a tank of petrol which in some ways was a little wasteful (as we really didn’t know how much we would use) but we like to think of it as repaying forward our travel karma! The next person shouldn’t have to put any petrol in. We are in no travel karma debt now!
We wanted to use today to explore Thira has we hadn’t had much of a chance until now and also to get me a magnet. We went down a little side street, looked in some shops and soon I found a magnet I really liked. When I went to purchase it, the lady also gave me a pin with an evil eye and a horse shoe on it “for good luck”. That was nice!
We slowly walked along the wall through a section we hadn’t been through before. There was a lovely view of the Caldera here (the ‘crater” of the volcano), and even some seats. Further along the wall, all you have is restaurants and shops, and the pathway becomes quite narrow so it was nice to see that there was room for seating here. I looked at all the restaurant menus on the way - we thought we may grab a cocktail or a bite to eat and watch the view. We kept walking and found a path up to the cable car which I nicknamed Donkey Poo Lane (and a cruise ship tourist repeated me, which was quite embarrassing!). I know it was a cruise ship tourist because one was in the port, and we could see hordes of them coming up via either donkey of cable car. I nicknamed this path so because it was obviously the way the donkey companies take the donkeys down to the starting place below Thira - it was covered in shit, and it avoided the town getting covered in shit. No one tells you about the shit when they tell you about Santorini!
We wandered at our leisure through the streets we hadn’t seen before until we found a little liquor shop selling Yellow Donkey beer for cheaper than we had seen it anywhere else. This I about the only beer made on the island, so we had wanted to try it. We got a Yellow Donkey and a Red Donkey, inquired as to whether it’s possible to drink in public (the answer being yes), and returned to the seats we had seen earlier in the day by the wall. Here we sat and drank our beers (it was after 11am so that makes it respectable), watching as the cruise ship people swarmed the walls getting their hurried snaps.
Time for lunch and we went back to the same place as the night before, both getting a chicken gyros this time and also trying a greek beer. The beer was pretty average, but the gyros was awesome, and we finished our beer sitting in the sun people watching. By now, my bladder was making itself known so we returned to the accommodation to pee and collect our luggage before seeing what kind of chaos getting the bus to the port was going to be.
Chaos it was, but true chaos was to come later. But I get ahead of myself. The bus station was a mass of confusion, as buses pulled up and left for various parts of the island and for the airport, with little to no signage or announcement. The man who had shouted at me a few days previously recognised us, said “Port? Sit here.” And ushered us out of the way. We knew this time that we had to get our luggage under the bus first before buying tickets (to avoid any more shouting) so we entered the shelter and waited for word about our bus. While there, we chatted with an American girl who had been on the road for months and was in her final few weeks. She had flown in, so hadn’t experienced the well-oiled-machine that is the port and ferries.
We all exchanged a lot of travel stories until Dan noticed a bus come in that looked like it might be for us. It was. It was early, too, but we threw our things underneath and joined the queue for a ticket. It seems that the buses arrive before schedule and take a load down when full, then come back up and grab the next load.
The drive down was quite pretty and nondescript. However, what ensured once we arrived at the ferry port was an utterly awful - probably hour? - of my life, and it took all of my will power not to punch someone in the face. Anyone would have done, although I can think of some contenders.
Shouldering our luggage, we meandered towards the building we would have to pass through to get out to board. It was pretty full, almost completely already, and full of big groups of young teenagers and Asian tour groups. We put our things down behind one of the groups of school kids, and just waited.
Apparently waiting was not what one of the tour groups behind wanted us to do. I was being tapped on the shoulder, and a hand waving frantically ahead of me at the 2 inches of space that was available. I refused to budge. I hate being shoved. In the end, a whole group of people pushed their way past me (some treading on my luggage, which resulted in some choice words again) until they filled the gap. And more came. More and more people tried to fill the space that literally could not be filled any more. If we had known, we would have stayed outside the building - this was not worth it. In the end we were shoved forward quite a considerable distance, the only consolation being that we ended up underneath the fans.
The boat was late, too, but about 15 minutes. When it came into view, Dan and I braced ourselves for the surge forward as people would think they could board, not thinking about the cars or people trying to come off. All sense of rest and relaxation of the last few days vanished entirely as I closed my eyes and did some breathing exercises.
The doors opened, and the man who had been frantically flapping his hands in my face (one of my anger trigger motions is flapping and pointing, I can’t stand it!) was at the front with his stupid little tour guide flag, running towards the boat. Our part started to shuffled forward, and next to me there was a slip stream that was going a lot faster. I was hesitant to join it, but in the end got pushed in against my will. It was ok - it actually led to a second door that most people weren’t using. Just ahead of us, everyone had to stop as some more cars were boarded, but soon enough we were racing towards the boat. A massive queue to go up the escalator - so Dan and I sucked it up and climbed up the two flights of stairs with all our luggage.
We got to the spot we wanted and - - - there was no one here. No one on this deck at all. For god’s sake, where did everyone push to get to? Out here was the view. Turns out they all wanted to be near the restaurant.
The journey ahead of us was going to take about 3 hours, and we had come prepared. After that hideous boarding, we quickly whipped out the Rose we had been carrying and had a few crackers with cheese to accompany it. It went quickly enough with no dramas, and soon enough we were approaching Paros. Yet again shouldering our luggage, we wandered down to the disembarkation deck (significantly fewer people this time!!) to wait for the ramps to open. The siren sounded, and out we walked - not pushed onto a new island.
I breathed a sigh of relief. This felt better. We saw a sign saying Hotel Margarita and with a big smile and a handshake, our host greeted us and started walking away from the port. Even though I knew the accommodation wasn’t far, for some reason when we had booked a pick up I had thought we would be driven. Turns out, it was good we had a guide as the streets are so windy that we wouldn’t never have found it alone!
We chatted with our host, a lot about our plans for America which interested him greatly, and soon we were at the hotel, where we received a warm smile and handshake from his wife. Both of them were so lovely. We were shown our room and told to pop up to the roof terrace when we were ready for check in. Our room was a triple room so we had plenty of space, and we had a little balcony overlooking the whitewashed streets.
When we were ready, we wandered up to the lovely terrace and offered drinks and some cookies. Our host thoroughly went through a map of Paros, including pointing out many places that were only accessible by car. This piqued my interest, and the car hire was ridiculously cheap. I said we would get back to him about it. They also suggested a few restaurants that were tasty and the best spots to view the sunset from.
Back in our room, we collapsed for a few minutes before realising the time and that sunset was soon. We raced out, and tried to make it to one of the restaurants that had been recommended that was supposed to have an excellent view. When we burst out of the white washed streets, the sun was directly ahead of us and rapidly heaving towards the horizon. There were a series of flat rocks here and so we settled ourselves down here to watch the sunset - we would have dinner later.
This sunset took. my. breath. away. The water shone all the colours of the sun, oranges, pinks, yellow and reds, and in between the water was an amazing blue-green. This sunset was even better than that from Oia, in my opinion, because the colours really caught on the water. At one point, I leaned back to take photos of my feet with the sunset in the distance, and I cried out in surprise. Something was behind me, which had squished when I leant back.
Dan turned and I turned and there was a cat, cuddling up to my back. A kitty that sought us out for a pat! This delightful kitty kept us company for the while time we sat there on the rock, snaking behind our backs and climbing on our laps for pats. She was pregnant and couldn’t get enough of our affection. I wanted to adopt her. Once the sun had set, and the sky had stopped changing colour, we said farewell to our favourite kitty and found the restaurant we had been recommended.
It was called Mira and it was indeed very tasty, if a bit pricier than our usual restaurants. It still only came to about €24 in the end! We had bread and dip and olives for starters, half a carafe of wine (of course), and I had something akin to a vegetable moussaka with lots of tomato sauce, and Dan had the proper moussaka. They were both delicious and we were very happy! Our meals with served with spoons so we thought we were supposed to eat it with those, so it was with great embarrassment when the owner quietly mentioned that the waiter thought we would be sharing, hence the spoons, but we could continue to eat with them if we liked… Oops!
As I was paying for the bill, she asked if we would like a shot to finish off with - strong or sweet? I asked if we could have one of each to try them, and we were given a shot of ouzo and I don’t know what the sweet one was, but after the shuddering induced by the ouzo the other was the right flavour to end our night on!
We got lost walking back to our accommodation, quite literally. We reached a point where the map seemed to indicate a road but we couldn’t see one - turns out that during the day we realised we were supposed to have gone down a few steps and through a very low tunnel that was obscured by the high street. In the end, and many kitties later, we arrived at our accommodation and crashed for the night.
Til next time,
xx
No comments:
Post a Comment