Santorini

After our wonderful stay in Mykonos, I didn't know how Santorini could out-do that island. It was different, but every bit as good.

Our ferry was arranged by the tour company. It is much farther from Mykonos to Santorini, than for our first ferry ride from Athens to Mykonos. Consequently, they had us booked on the fast ferry this time. No one got sick. I couldn't tell that we were going faster, but especially near shore it was rougher. Lots more about the ferries in the recap.

These bells are everywhere. Odd number of bells means its a catholic church; Even number (4 here) means Greek Orthodox. In Fira alone, there are 90 chapels, though not all have bells.

On our tour of Santorini I required a swim at one of the famous beaches. This is the black sand beach. Along the road, behind the sun beds, is a line of restaurants, and if they have a restaurant, they are required to have these types of seating.

I couldn't tell you which restaurant we stopped at for lunch, but the kids were really hungry and very tired of Greek food. We ate out for every meal, always at a different restaurant. Oddly, there is almost no fish on the menu, and nearly every restaurant, even those recommended in tour guidebooks, all had the same items. I liked the food. There were always lots of people, and the wait grew really long at this restaurant when we learned that there were only 2 servers and 1 of them had just passed out and the ambulance came and got him.

When we finally ate, the kids (and me) got in the water. They liked the sun and waves. The area we were in had a lot of families.

We went to the excavations at Afrokiri as part of our day long tour of Santorini. Most of the ruins from antiquity throughout Greece are above ground, not requiring a lot of digging to get to them. Afrokiri was a "pre-antiquity" excavation--much different from everything else we saw.
The kids were not thrilled about "another ruin? ReallY?" A van load of teens was ahead of us in line. It didn't help that they were googling the site, which showed exactly what we'd see inside. "See, we can just google it." But that was the point, right? We saw first hand, by our own eyes, the rise and fall of generations and civilizations.

We paid our euros and went in. Lo and behold it was a huge enclosure all air conditioned! And there was a nice rest room with a lady who kept it clean. I'm glad we visited this site.