Early the next morning the sun streamed through the windows as
Erin excitedly roused me from my sleep in order to see the early morning sun over the caldera.
The view was even more astounding that it had appeared at night.
Most people would have stood there for hours unable to peel their eyes away from the sight that met our eyes.
But I was really really tired so I turned right back around and went back to sleep for an hour.
We spend the rest of the morning exploring our little area of Oia. The white houses littering the side of the cliff punctuated every now and then with the blue dome of a church left use both futilely attempting to not take the same pictures over and over again. We found a small bakery Rose had recommended to use the night before and which we would frequent for a cheap breakfast the remainder of the week.
Finally we caught a bus to town of Fira. Walking around, I realized two things: there were a whole lot of touristy shops and we were destined to visit each and every one of them. Multiple times. As Fira is also the main town on Santorini, the cruise ships dock there and release hundreds of crazy American and European tourists onto streets. Yes, I realize we were also American tourists but at least we were staying on the island for the week. These people got dropped off for an afternoon and went on a rampage.
Consulting our guide book (yes, we were those people), we found a little café to eat lunch in. As our waiter told us how their menu was solely in Greek, I couldn’t tell whether he was taking great pride in their traditionalism or whether he showing great disdain for the two damned tourists he now was forced to translate the menu for. Either way we both ordered lamb and potatoes in a lemon sauce with a Mythos and had a delicious lunch.
According to our guide book, Fira is located only 8 km from Oia and that it highly recommended the walk inbetween along the Caldera for getting some great pictures. As 8 km is only about 5 miles, Erin and I thought it’d be a fun time to take that walk. The walk started out with us having to navigate a maze of criss-crossing paths and stairs as we attempted to get out of the town of Fira. About 2 hours later found us thanking above for a small restaurant pretty much in the middle of nowhere about halfway between Fira and Oia where we could sit down and have a water and a beer and rest. During this time we also starting to worry that perhaps the guide book had been a little off about the distance. An hour later there wasn’t even a path and we were trailblazing along volcanic rock and admiring, with a little unease, all the obvious rockslides that had occurred on the hillside and thinking yes indeed, the book was definitely wrong about the distance. An hour later we were climbing up a damn mountain screaming very very bad things about the book. On top of the mountain we found a church (the 3rd we’d seen since we began our hike) and were able to see the entire path we had walked as well as the remaining path to Oia. An hour later, tired, sore, with rocks in our shoes and Erin’s bladder having to burst for the past 2 hours, we finally made it back to our room. We figured the true distance we had walked was much closer to 14 miles. And we were very very hungry.
Our guide book (yes, we were still listening to the guide book. I often wonder now why I hadn’t set the thing on fire at this point), mentioned that the small fishing village of Amoudi, 300 steps below Oia, was a great place for dinner and to watch the sunset. We stopped off at the local supermarket to get a bottle of wine for later that night and to get directions to Amoudi. The clerk pointed us down the road and told us to follow it all the way to the village.
We started walking down the winding road hoping to get to Amoudi by sunset. As we continued winding, the village was not appearing but the sun was getting much lower. After walking for 20 minutes we saw two tiny, not exactly in tip top condition restaurants with gigantic signs advertising the best sunset view on the island. Obviously there had been a bit of an exaggeration there for when we got close to the two restaurants we saw both of them had closed down and been boarded up. So much for that. In the end we just found a spot on the side of the road over looking the caldera and spent the sunset resting there. It was a beautiful sunset even if we weren’t seated at a comfortable restaurant table.
At this point we were too tired and sore to continue looking for Amoudi and decided just to hike back up the hill and eat dinner in Oia. As Erin had pretty much torn her feet to blistered pieces by now, this proved to be a long long walk to the top. We finally just sat down at a local grill and had an extremely delicious dinner. I had some sausages while Erin ordered the chicken. The traditional dessert there is also watermelon. I found it quite delicious while Erin looked at me like I was crazy for eating it.
After this we retired to our room having walked an uncomfortably large amount. We enjoyed a glass of wine (which proved to be a rather cheap, but at that point quite satisfying, table wine) and slipped off to bed thinking wow, we got a lot of great pictures and I can’t feel my feet anymore.
