Tuesday, May 26, 2015
By now, after a week of traveling, Grace and I were pretty much in sync. We had a 4:30 p.m. flight from Athens to Santorini, and I told Grace well in advance that in order for me not to stress out about missing it, I insisted that we be in a cab to the airport by 2-ish. We packed a lot into our short day. On the way to the new Parthenon Museum, we stopped at a post office because I had a grand plan of mailing back home all the Croatia guidebooks that were useful in Croatia but not so much now. This plan was shattered when I found that the post office had a single employee who was tending to the needs of an elderly woman with a stack of at least 50 envelopes. Waiting in line for this transaction to end was not in the scheme, so off we went to the museum.
Dave and I visited the new Parthenon Museum in July 2009, when it had been open for literally a week. It’s a gorgeous museum. Grace was highly amused at the film loop playing in the lobby, because one of her Haverford professors was featured in it, speaking first in English then in Greek. There’s a new feature added since I was last there – an emphasis on color. Several of the sculptures now have reproductions next to them showing how the statue would have looked when painted. It brings a whole different dimension to the marble.
Without feeling overly rushed, we finished our tour of the Parthenon Museum and flagged a cab to the National Archaeological Museum, which I hadn’t been to before. Once again, you can see that the current state of the Greek budget doesn’t allow for much up keeping of the grounds.
We did a BRISK tour, but we still got the essence of it. There’s a nice collection of treasures from Egypt, Grace’s true love. We even had time to eat sandwiches in the rather nice café and patio. This was my favorite piece at the museum: Venus clubbing a satyr with a flip-flop.
At 1:50 we were in a cab on the way to the hotel to pick up our luggage, and by 2:05 we were on the way to the airport. Almost on schedule, with no bickering whatsoever. Our flight to Santorini took off on time, and things were going quite smoothly.
I had a car reserved in Santorini, but I didn’t pick it up. Our first hotel (of two in Santorini) had told me via email that parking would be tough, and after the nightmare arriving in Dubrovnik several days earlier and the general difficulty of driving in Croatia, I just couldn’t handle another car. Maybe I would reconsider in the morning, if we felt we needed a car. So we shared a cab to Oia with another couple, getting dropped off at Alexander’s Boutique Hotel. This was our “cheap” Santorini hotel, and I was wary because it had gotten some dicey reviews on TripAdvisor about people not getting the room they expected. I had confirmed and reconfirmed.
Everything seemed in order at check-in, and I was quite pleased. The day was going so well! I’ll digress here and say that six years earlier Dave and I had taken a small cruise (40 passengers) through the islands with the intent of stopping in Santorini. Although the sun was blazing throughout that trip, the winds were treacherous, and the boat never made it to the middle of the Aegean Sea, staying close to shore for the entire week. It was a fabulous trip, once I got over the fact that my carefully-planned itinerary had been ruined, but ever since then I’ve been scheming to get to Santorini. It is, after all, the most famous of the Greek islands for its spectacular views and whitewashed structures tucked into the cliffs. View from the reception area at Alexander’s:
Alexander’s was just what one would expect, with steep stairways clinging to the cliffs. As this was not an expensive place, it had no pool, but the location on the outskirts of Oia was good. After checking in, I gingerly made my way back up to the path where Grace was waiting with our bag. She was in a panic, to put it mildly: Her phone was missing. “Mom, I haven’t seen it since we got off the plane. It must have fallen out of my backpack.” Akif, a 20-something Greek of Palestinian descent, jumped into action, asking for Grace’s boarding pass and immediately getting on the phone.
Grace and I went into our cave-room. She was distraught. Initially I thought, “What’s the big deal? It’s just a phone.” But she had been using it as her camera the whole trip, her mother having taken over her good camera (her mother’s good camera having mysteriously broken right before the trip, through no fault of her mother). She hadn’t been able to back up her phone since we had been in Europe, so all her photos were gone. I could understand her distress. She flopped onto the bed – a soft mattress on a platform carved out of the stone – and promptly flung herself backward onto the pillow. Except it wasn’t a pillow. It was the stone table at the head of the bed, also carved into the cave. The thunk of her head hitting the stone was sickening. She came close to knocking herself out, and while she was still seeing stars, Akif ran in and said, “Grab your passports! We’re heading back to the airport. They found your phone.”
We piled into Akif’s car and he zoomed us off. This was our second drive of the hour on the winding road from Oia back to the center of the island. Akif was definitely anxious, perhaps about getting there before the airport office closed for the evening. His anxiety was justified; when we arrived at the tiny Santorini airport it was a complete zoo, with throngs of people in line for the final flight of the night. The airport office was empty, however, so Akif got on the phone again. All of this was in Greek, mind you; I can’t imagine what we would have done without him. Eventually he found someone in charge, who went back to the office, opened a file cabinet, pulled out an envelope, and produced Grace’s cell phone. Until we saw it, I was not convinced they had hers; there might be one or two other iPhones out there in the world. But it was indeed her phone, and we were all joyous. Akif was visibly relieved. He offered to take us someplace to view the famous Santorini sunset, but we thought we should rest for just a bit after this ordeal, especially given my concern that Grace had a concussion. We did stop for photo ops on the way back.
Above, Grace recovering in our cozy cave room. That’s what it was actually called on the reservation: Cozy Cave Room. Note the built-in table at the end of the bed, on which Grace practically knocked herself out.
Above, the view in the other direction. Grace still checking her phone and smiling, so happy is she to have it back. After a brief lull, my hard-headed daughter was ready to go out again, so we walked toward the center of Oia. There’s not much that needs to said. It’s simply spectacular.
In the photo below, you can see in the center Imerovigli, the town where we stayed the following two nights. Fog is rolling in along the top of the ridge between Oia and Imerovigli.
I was amused at the props conveniently located for tourist photos (above and below).
The plan was to watch the sunset, but it started raining. No problem – we had two more nights to catch the sunset. We ate at a seafood restaurant on a balcony hanging over a cliff. That’s what all the restaurants on Santorini are like, which doesn’t make them any less pleasant.
We strolled back to the hotel – thank goodness for the umbrellas we bought in Zagreb – where Akif asked us to join him for a bottle of wine under a canopy. He couldn’t drink because, as it turned out, he was the manager of the hotel, but he wanted to host us. What a lovely young man. He is going back to Athens to business school, and we wish him well.