eleftheria and i rounded out our tour of greek islands with classic santorini. it is possible that every image that you have in your mind (unless you have visited, have been following the blog, or enjoy watching puffed up videos of our protests) of greece comes from a calendar where 90% of the pictures come from santorini, yeah you know the ones, blue and white buildings, blue skies, and crystal waters.
well, i have something like 300 pictures from the weekend, so i thought that i would break this down into a couple of different posts. we'll start with an overview of the trip, sound good?
day1: eleftheria and i flew out of thessaloniki at 6 in the evening on thursday. i was a bit rushed as school finished that very afternoon and i was running on 4 nights of minimal or no sleep. we arrived in thira (the main town of santorini) around 11 and went straight to bed; well, i did, eleftheria hit the town with the girls. we left the hotel in the morning, toured around thira for a bit and then, with some friends of elftheria, went straight to the beach.
the island of santorini is actually split into a couple of different island due to the vocanic eruption that wiped out the minoan civilization. The volcano has created a unique landscape with a variety of beaches including black pebbles, black sand, and red sand. The first one we went to was a black sand beach. it was quiet, the water was perfect and across the back of the beach was a really cool wall of ash/basalt conglomerate. It was a super relaxing day followed by a big dinner and a quick outing for a gin n' tonic.
nice black sand, and eleftheria's nail polished matched her dress perfectly.
pretty cool backdrop for a beach.
because the rock was so soft the wind has really left its mark.
day 2: Wedding Bells
the main reason for our 3 day excursion to santorini was to attend the wedding of a close friend of eleftheria. The wedding day started a bit late as we were out late the night before, and after breakfast eleftheria went off to the bride's pre-wedding preparation extravaganza. off the hook for any of the pre-wedding festivities, i went with a couple of other friends to one of the popular beaches on the island and enjoyed an afternoon of cliff jumping and swimming.
great cliff jumping into pristine blue water.
after getting all dressed up in my island best, i joined the rest of the company for the wedding procession, which included a donkey, as we made our way to the small church overlooking the cliffs edge. eleftheria and i were by far the best dressed couple (yes, including the bride and groom) and that is a humble/objective opinion (ok, ok, yes the bride and groom were beautiful, so we were tied, whatever). at any rate, after the wedding the reception was held at a very nice beach bar that overlooked the beach where we had been on the first day. The whole event was very nicely done, and while i am sure it was pricey, it was neither over the top nor tacky. after a swim at 4 in the morning we returned to the hotel room as the sun came up.
i am not quite sure why my wedding pictures are grainy, but they are; whatever, this is the bride on her donkey ride to the church.
this is the groom dancing around the donkey that he brought to the hotel to carry the bride to the church. it was pretty cool.
awe yeah, that's right, i beat the wedding photographer on this one. super cute couple, really nice, really excited, and really in love.
wedding receptions in greece are on the average way more fun that those that i have been to in the states.
doing our best to out do everyone else.
day 3: since we had seen very little of the island, eleftheria and i decided to rent a scooter, we dubbed blue thunder due to the fact that it was more noise than real action, and took a self guided tour of the island from the red beach on the southern tip of the island to the village of ia in the north. it was a great trip including swimming, a wine tasting at a local vineyard, and possibly the best spanakopita i have ever tasted. all this was done within a four hour time limit as we thought that we were going to catch a boat to go to the airport for our plane-ride back to thessaloniki.
i use the word thought because the boat was an hour and a half late, we missed our flight, termoil insued, our wonderful friends (thank you dora and angialos) came through for us, we book a new flight (much more expensive) and made it home in time to sleep a few hours before work started.
there were points where eleftheria had to get off for this 50cc monster so that it could really show its muscle.
oh yeah, and her helmet had a huge hole in it that was plugged with silicon.
the red beach was really cool. the water was super green and there were these old doors in the wall that were probably used by the fishermen back in the day (at least that is our best guess).
the grapes that grow on the island are island specific, protected by the eu, and they grow on the ground. they have never had an illness and they are the only species allowed on the island.
calendar picture.
the layering is amazing and this is how i had imagined all of the island to be (it is not). in ia one house flows into the next and it is all continuous whitewashed concrete, very beautiful.
enlarge the picture to see how many churches you can find.
