Oh Santorini, how we miss you.

Day1:
So after our 5 hour long, noisy ferry we arrive in the Greek Island - Santorini! The ferry ride over, we weren't sitting next to a window, so our view was limited, but when we stepped off the ferry we were awed. The place is just gorgeous!! We were so excited, and couldn't have been happier! We had arranged for our hostel to pick us up, so we got there, and there was a man holding a sign with my name on it!! It was like I was famous. I wish I could have gotten a picture, but that would have been kind of weird. It was so awesome though, because our hostel in Santorini was by far the cheapest one we've gotten - 10 euro per person per night - and it was one of the most accommodating. We stayed at Perissa Aroma or something like that. If you ever go to Santorini and are looking for a cheap hostel, stay there - I'll give you the info. But anyway, our ride was free to our hostel and when we got there we were greeted with four beds in our room (who wouldn't want two extra ones), our own bathroom, and to top it off, our own kitchen! We were beyond stoked.

Our first stop was the grocery store and ATM and then...the BEACH!! We were staying in Perissa where the sand is black. Well, I wouldn't really call it sand - it's more like tiny little rocks (literally, I'm not quoting Jack Handy). There is like a volcano right off the island, and so that's why it's black. Nonetheless, it was amazing and so pretty!! We just relaxed on the beach for a few hours and then headed back to our hostel to shower and get ready to go get dinner. Nick, the owner of the hostel, suggested that we go to this place call Charlina which was along the beach and he gave us a card for free wine. We make our way down there and are walking down the road for way too long it seems, but people keep pointing us that direction. Eventually we come upon and find out after having ordered that there is another Charlina much closer to where we are staying. Oh well...they gave us the free wine anyway and they had good food. We were the only ones in the restaurant though, so it was a little awkward, but delicious nonetheless. Stephanie and I seem to have made a habit out of walking clear past our destination or getting lost. There are more stories to come about that...we don't understand how it keeps happening, but I suppose it provides a good laugh later on.

We spent the rest of the evening just sitting on the ledge that leads to the beach and watching the stars (a little romantic evening for us...haha). It was so pretty though!! I even saw a shooting star!! I had never seen one before. We went home and immediately fell asleep.

Day2:
The spirit of Santorini called for sleeping in. We needed the break, and it was quite nice not having to get up and go walk around a boiling hot city for the entire day. We woke up and ate some breakfast and brought our laundry to the laundromat. Right next door was a bakery and so we stopped in and got some balaclava! It wasn't very good, honestly. But I think we got a bad one or something. We packed a lunch and went to the beach to relax for the day. We stayed at the beach most of the day and then came back to our hostel to shower. After that, we decided to go to this restaurant called Grandma's Recipes. We ordered this huge gyro and split it - it was delicious. It was quite windy and chilly at night.

We met a few people at our hostel's pool - 2 girls - one from Texas and one from Australia, and 2 other boys, both from Australia. We hung out with them for a while, and then went to this place called Beach Bar and hung out there. It was fun. Steph and I left before everyone else, but I wouldn't exactly call it early because it was like 2:30 or 3. Sleep was definitely in order.

Day3:
Day 3 was one of, if not, the best day of our lives. We rented an ATV (a 4 wheeler) and set out to explore the island. It was so much fun to drive around, and the views were so beautiful!

Our first stop was Red Beach. It's pretty awesome to see - there is like this huge cut out of the mountain and it's all red, and so the sand/rocks are red too. The water was gorgeous - so clear!! The beaches there are all like rocks and not sand, so it's difficult to walk on, but the water makes it totally worth it. The beach was small too, so there weren't many people. We relaxed on Red Beached for a while and then saw his boat going to White Beach, so we decided to get on. White Beach was also so pretty!! But it was definitely the hardest to walk on because it was all big rocks. But I think it was my favorite. The rocks and background mountain thing were all white and of course the water was clear as day. Plus there were probably no more than 15 people on the beach.

Steph and I decided to get in and try to swim to this big rock sticking out of the water. Eventually the ground turned to sand, so it was easier to walk on, and then we noticed it wasn't getting any deeper! It stayed right below our shoulders (well, my shoulders, maybe Stephanie's chin...rofl) and so we were able to get to the big rock quite easily! We got on the rocks and jumped off of them. I pretended they were cliffs because we were sad to find out (although my mom won't be) that Santorini doesn't have cliff jumping, so the rocks were the closest I could get. It was so much fun.

After the beaches, we hopped back onto our ATV and headed to Fira, which is the main town of Santorini. We just stopped for a bit and then continued on to Oia where we planned to watch the sunset. We had heard it's really beautiful on that part of the island because it's like on the north east corner, so it sets right over the water. The ride out there so gorgeous! We ended up driving along the east side of the island, and so we had a clear view of the water the whole way there. It was awesome. My descriptions will never do it justice.

We ended up stopping at Katharos beach to wait for the sun to set. It was so empty - for a while we were the only ones on the whole beach!! The waves were huge too! We were quite early, so we sat for about an hour just watch the water. It was perfect. The actual sun set happened fast. You don't realize how fast it moves without a reference point like the horizon. It was way pretty.

Afterward we had to drive all the back across the entire island, and like I said before, it was cold and windy at night. We were in shorts and tank tops so it was quite the chilly ride. Luckily we huddled close together and it only takes about 45 minutes. We made it home safely, showered, and headed to bed. The perfect day.

Day4:
Our last day in Santorini - sigh. We didn't do much. We packed up, checked our flight info (we decided to book a flight straight to Rome instead of take the ferry because it would have taken two days of travel with the ferry - so we sucked it up and payed the money for the flight so we could spend more time in Santorini - it was worth it), bought souvenirs and got our last of Greek food. We sat by our hostel pool for most of the day with our Texan and Australian friend because it was really windy, therefore the beach would have probably been unpleasant. We took one last walk along the beach and then had to head to the airport around 7 to catch our flight to Rome. We actually had like a 12 hour layover in Athens, so that was our hostel for the night. It was fine - cold, but did the job. We eventually made it to Rome, but it was quite bittersweet. Most people would be thrilled to go to Rome, but we were already having Santorini withdrawals.

Casey - I wrote this and the Athens post in the same day, so I have nothing new to say to you...go read Athens, and you'll see.

Miss and love everyone!! Thanks for reading - I hope you all are enjoying this! Sorry that it's difficult to post on a regular basis, I'm doing my best!

Love,
Chelsea