The Earliest Morning Ever In Life

July 1, 2019

Man alive, I’m going on hour 19 hours awake, having woken up at 3am to catch my pre-planned taxi pickup at 4am to head to the airport to fly to Santorini.

Except the taxi didn’t come.

That was a nice surprise at 3:55am to 4:15am standing outside in the pitch dark.

It was organized by the folks who run the AirBNB that I’m staying at in Athens, and apparently there was just a misunderstanding and the taxi showed up about 5 minutes after I gave up on them and walked to find my own taxi.

I mean, I don’t know what numbers to call, so, just had to solve the problem. Did it. Got to the airport. Made the flight with plenary of time. Landed in Santorini at 7:45am.

From there, I wasn’t able to check into my hotel until 2pm, so I just shot around town on the bus and got to see a ton of great Santorini-ness!

Here are some picture of Oia (pronounced “ee-yah”), the northernmost large city in Santorini.

It was absolutely brilliant because it was so early. I spoke to a lovely woman in a gorgeous jewellery shop for about 15 minutes, and she told me that come 10am, all of the cruise ships would be in and the whole place becomes a nightmare. So, I had a solid 2 hours to breathe, and then she was a billion percent right.

I took the bus to the next stop I wanted to make before the hotel, which is called Fira. It was slammed with people, and was pretty unpleasant only because of that.

Now, you know how sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know? Well, my plan today was to cover off Oia and Fira, and then spend tomorrow at the hotel in the morning, then Thira in the afternoon (the main city in Santorini) with a dinner reservation there that overlooks all of the gorgeous slopes / views.

Well, it turns out that Fira and Thira are the same thing. Yup, just a different way to write / say them. So, I already did the main town I was going to do tomorrow. All it means is that I have to find more to do tomorrow, which I’m sure will be easy to do, but boy did I feel dumb when I figured that out!

Anyhow, here are some gorgeous pictures from Fira / Thira as well. Stunning!

From there, I finally found the bus station. There was a lot of “Where is that bus going? I shall follow it!”, in order to try and find the “station”. I say “station” because it’s a bunch of people confused in a space that a few buses fit in. You pay when you get on, after the bus leaves. This guy comes around, asks where you’re going, gives you the cost, you pay, and he gives you change. Seems like a surefire way to have people come on and not have money to pay. Sure wouldn’t fly in Toronto, but of course it wouldn’t, and it shouldn’t! This is Greece, they do things Greece style!

I finally arrived at the hotel after taking the bus too far, then being overcharged to take a cab back to the hotel. I really like the look and feel of this place!

And this is the view from my balcony. I have to say, the island isn’t what I was expecting. I think I was set on expecting the blue roofs and domes on the whole island, but if you're not in the main cities, it’s pretty brown and spaced out.

However, still a sight to see!

I checked in, I got to my room, I spaced out for a bit, and then I went to the pool! It is EXACTLY what I needed and wanted and needed again.

It’s gorgeous, and I spent about 3 hours out there, sitting in the shade and jumping in for a few swims and some laps from time to time.

After the relaxing, I decided to get cleaned up and find something for dinner (the food above was at the very beginning of pool time).

I found a place called Mother’s Recipes, and it had a ton of great reviews. I walked there and got some gyro for dinner. It was pretty good. But, what I just HAVE to report is the deeeeelicious bougatsa that I found at a 24-hour bakery on the walk back to the hotel!

It’s from the place above, and it’s SO EFFING GOOD! If you haven’t had bougatsa before, it’s a delicious phyllo pastry with a bunch of relatively mild custard throughout the whole middle, with icing sugar and cinnamon on top.

OUTrageous!

And now I’m full of that happiness, writing this blog, and very, very excited to sleep!

So, with that, I will leave this post here, with much to share tomorrow as well, after I arrive back in Athens around 1am. Good fun!