Santorini!

Thursday, July 30:

We decided this would be our full sightseeing day. The first stop was to be ancient Thera. We had to take a bus from Perissa to the main hub in Fera and then another one to Kamari (which is actually right next to Perissa but, due to the mountain in between, isn't so easy to get to). At Kamari, there was another mini-bus to the top of the mountain. Walking was an option but one that we didn't take.

It's always interesting to see old sites preserved, and this is a very large, well-conserved place. It had an agora, a theatre, several temples and some animal engravings. There was also a great view, from the top, of the sea and cities below. At 2:15 the last mini-bus down came by and we lunched at the bottom.

We didn't really have a plan for after ancient Thera, but we figured Oia would be nice to see, so two more buses later we're there. When we got to the main road (with all the shops and restaurants) we saw the amazing little bookstore, Atlantis Books, and we were set to go in but when we saw the little kitty sleeping in a trunk of books, we were really excited to see some books! That's probably one of my favourite moments of this trip, just a small cat in books. Both Ashley and I came away with books, so already the trip to Oia was successful.

Most of the time there was spent walking up and down the road, looking in and out of the stores there. About half an hour before sunset, we staked out our spots on a low wall. We were soon glad that we'd waited early because the space filled up fast, as did all the spaces below that afforded a view of the sunset. The sunset in Oia is supposed to be excellent, and ideal because it's really the one place where the sun sets in the water instead of behind the volcano. When the sunset came... we weren't impressed. We'd seen far better ones at Porolissum. So perhaps the sun was just having an off day. It's funny though, people were clapping when it was over.

We were chatting with a girl there, who was sightseeing with her parents. We found out her parents were Romanian, and had an excited little talk with them about Romania. It was nice to have that small connection when neither of us would be seeing Romania this year.

We ate dinner in Oia and then caught the bus back to Fera and Perissa, thence to bed.

More later on Santorini.