Santorini: Sailboats and Sunsets

Let’s just say our cruise to the island of Santorini did not begin according to plan.

When you need to catch a ferry in the am and you’re a sleep deprived non-morning person, I would advise you to set at least two separate alarms. Neither Tessie or I are morning people. For those of you who know us both, it might surprise you to be informed that I was actually better than she was on this trip, at least in the beginning. I was the one getting us up every morning and being peppy and upbeat to try and get the day going. And the day we needed to catch our ferry to Santorini was the day I accidentally set the alarm for 5:30 pm instead of 5:30 am. So, when Tessie woke up with a jerk and looked at the clock and it was 6:30, and she shook me and I awoke with an even more sudden jerk, what followed was a flurry of fevered packing and spastic scraps of conversation. We were somehow on the metro by 6:50, and there was the slightest chance we could make it to our 7:25 ferry if we hurried! Both of us kept reassuring the each other that we could make it, without making eye contact so the other couldn’t read the doubt in our eyes. We ran or rather lumbered around the port with our huge packs on our backs like a pair of deranged buffalo chased with cattle prods. And, panting violently, finally arrived at our gate! Right as the ferry pulled away.

Neither of us had any words as we stood at the edge of the dock in utter dejection watching that ferry pull away- all we could do was stare at its disappearing bulk like a pair of thwarted bovines, our eyes large and sad. There it was, our ship to Paradise Island, moving inexorably into the mist just out of our reach. The men at the ticket booths along the gate surveyed us with a little listless pity, and I’m sure we looked utterly pathetic: no makeup, clothes and hair a mess, over-burdened with luggage and completely crestfallen. Tears stung in my eyes as I thought with self-pity that I hadn’t even remembered to put my earrings in and that my clothes didn’t match.

Trying to look happy over a waffle after missing the ferry

Thankfully we had each other to fall back on, and withdrew to a dingy green bench to regroup. I’ve had recurring nightmares about missing boats and planes, and they all came rushing back to me as I drooped on the bench in defeat. For me it literally was a living nightmare.

But, I am happy to inform you, it wasn’t actually the end of the world! After a certain amount of lumbering back and forth between ticket booths and travel agents, we finally found a suitable solution and booked a ferry leaving at twelve noon. And this is where you find out that our apparent disaster was actually a blessing. Our original plan for finding lodging in Santorini was to bargain with the hotel people who always hang around ports in Greece and get a great deal on accommodations. After the morning’s events, however, neither of us felt up to dealing with any more uncertainly or stress, and instead we bargained with the travel agent and booked a hotel. The Hotel Princess. I will admit the name sold me. The cheap rates sold Tessie. This ended up being providential because once we did get into the port in Santorini, it was late and it was dark and every hotel person waiting at the port and looked like someone you would not want to meet in a dark alley. So, God used our discomfort in missing our boat to keep us from getting into the even more uncomfortable situation of having nowhere to stay late at night in a strange town alone. Not really sure what we were thinking in the first place, expecting to get a hotel in the port without it being kind of an ordeal!

SO HAPPY to be on the ferry at last

So it was that after several hours of lingering awkwardly in a café in Athens and several more hours on the ferry we did in fact arrive in Santorini. With rising excitement we stepped off the rocking ramp and looked for the people from the hotel sent to pick us up. A chubby middle-aged Greek man with a dark tan, a Puma t-shirt and gold chain necklaces was jerkily waving a sign reading “Hotel Princess,” and when we approached him he grabbed our hands energetically. “Hello, hello, hello! Welcome, welcome! I’m Roberto, I run the hotel, nice to meet you, so nice to meet you! Here, here is the car! Right over here! Go ahead, let me take your bags, get in, get in!” As we climbed into the back of the tiny beat up car and took a seat on an old beach towel adorned with a smiling dolphin, we could already tell that this was going to be an interesting stay.

Hotel Princess Santorini

The beat-up car, beach towel-covered backseat and unprofessional demeanor of our guide did not really inspire confidence in us. As we sped up and down winding mountain roads in the dark, with no idea where we were being taken and no information offered to us by Roberto, we were both a little tense. We kept glancing at each other and chuckling nervously through our small talk, each hoping in the back of our mind that we weren’t the victims of an elaborate scam. But, to our relief we were after some hair-raising driving deposited safely in front of the hotel. And even though we had to go knocking on several doors before finding our warm and welcoming hostess, a middle aged woman in a stained sweatshirt looking kind but worn and tired, we found ourselves enchanted with the tiny hotel! Roberto and his wife run the place, and it has a family owned and operated feel, from the hand written signs to the mismatched cups to the fact that there is almost never anyone at reception and you have to go knocking on their house door to find someone to talk to. She even told us to drop by around 8:30 the next morning for information about the island since that is when she would be back from taking the kids to school. In appearance, the hotel is impeccably neat, small and picturesque. Patterned bedspreads, a tiny balcony, blue flowered curtains and brown tiles combine to make it feel comfortable and cute.

Clouds over the Caldera

Santorini, like our hotel, is small, homey and enchanting. The houses are miniature adobe huts bleached white with blue roofs and fences or surrounded by low rocky handmade walls. In the vineyards the vines don’t grow upright on trellises as in Italy or France, but crouch and crawl on the ground like rows of little bushes. Even the wildflowers that cover the island are not fancy or exquisite but small and humble; little yellow and white daisies carpet the rocky fields, and tiny purple violets grow by walls. Restaurant signs and menus are often at least partly handwritten, and businesses are family owned and operated with less emphasis on professionalism and more on personalized service.

The Red Beach

The island is only about thirteen miles long, low and rocky with mountains in the middle. It’s shaped like a crescent, forming a giant lagoon lined with rugged cliffs. Here and there narrow beaches slide smoothly into the Aegean Sea. The water is clear, bluer than the sky and glows aquamarine in places, especially at dawn and dusk. What makes the island unique, though, is the color and texture of the rock. Since it’s a volcanic island the rock is porous, much lighter for its bulk than the granite this Georgia girl is used to, and comes in rich red, coal black, chalky white or warm yellow. The beaches are colored correspondingly; there is a Red Beach, a few Black Beaches and White Beaches. The sand on the beaches isn’t soft and fine but is coarse and even pebbly in places; like the cliffs and the rocks that cover the island it is light but rough. It sticks to your skin like normal sand but it’s colored, so you get up off the beach with a layer of tiny black or red pebbles clinging to the backs of your legs. The effect of the ruddy or coal-colored pebbles against the teal-to-violet sea is absolutely fantastic; I could just loaf in the surf and gaze at the coastline for hours.

The small size of the island, its homey atmosphere and all the bright coloring make it feel sort of like a large playground. And that’s essentially what it is- a playground for tourists. The only Greek people who live there are hotel and restaurant owners; everyone else is a tourist, and the whole island is set up to be a kind of giant tourist playpen. You can’t really get lost there because there are only a few roads, and if you start driving in the wrong direction you will hit a coast (the playpen walls) before long and know you’ve gone too far. Although Tessie and I did manage to get a little lost. We couldn't have cared less, though, because most of the fun was in the driving itself and I’ll tell you why. We rented a four-wheeler for our stay on the island, and motored noisily, sometimes clumsily and always very slowly from one end of that little island to the other! The ATV was rented to us by the nicest little family who gave us driving lessons, bulbous helmets, directions to all the major sights, driving advice and windbreakers in case of rain or cool night weather. The dad and son watched in amusement as we set off slowly and precariously, Tessie driving and me on the back “navigating.” The vehicle maxed out at an impressive 30 mph and had no reverse- if you want to move in reverse you have to get off and pull it backwards yourself. Taking turns driving our little red ATV on the small winding roads surrounded by villages, vineyards and fields of wildflowers was possibly our favorite part of staying on the island. Having a bottle of wine on the beach wasn’t too shabby either.

On the ATV

Wine on the Black Beach

I’ll end with a description of two beautiful sunsets. Since Santorini is shaped like a crescent, both tips of the “moon” are surrounded on almost all sides by water. Watching a sunset over 270 degrees of the bluest ocean in the world is quite an experience. We watched the sun set from the northern point of the crescent our first night there, over the cluster of tiny white houses that compose the village of Oia. The second evening we were treated to an even better sunset from the southern point next to an old lighthouse, where the sinking sun stained the reddish rock to a crimson hue which offset the deepening indigo of the waves and sky. We drank beers in contented silence, just soaking it in, gazing at the sky and the coasting birds and tiny sailboat which alone broke up the vast plane of glowing ocean. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here you go. It was misty both days so the colors weren't that great, but the experience of being surrounded by water as the sun sinks into the silvery sea was still wonderful.

Sunset over Oia

Sunset by the Lighthouse

After our two days in Santorini Tessie and I returned to Athens for a night, where she caught a flight to the U.S. and I a ferry to Italy. We were sad to part ways, I especially because I had before me the task of working my way up by ferry and train from Greece to Germany. Along the way I stopped in the beautiful Alpine town of Annecy, where I encountered The French for the first time in my trip! And how did it all shake out? I’ll leave that for another post!