Wednesday, May 27, 2015
After breakfast on our balcony, we walked back into Oia. Sure, there are lots of people, but there’s a breathtaking view every ten feet. The stores were adorable, but we were seriously hampered by our lack of luggage space. We were forced to buy jewelry instead of clothes. I was feeling a bit broke after springing for Grace’s graduation party – could it have been only 11 days ago? – so we limited our purchases to inexpensive jewelry…some crafty stuff by a German ex-pat…some slightly more pricey enameled earrings for each of us at a more fancy place. I resisted the bracelet I desperately wanted; I would think about it and come back later. In each of these stores the owners were delightful and wanted to chat; of course, you expect friendliness in a tourist town, but you don’t always get warmth.
The only piece of clothing we tried to buy was a linen shirt for Dave. No luck finding the perfect shirt in the right size. But we still had time, right?
Oia in the bright sunshine is about as photogenic a place as I can imagine, so indulge me by wading through my many photos.
After discussing it with Akif and his girlfriend the night before, I decided to bite the bullet and rent another car. It had been three days since dropping off our rental car in Dubrovnik, so I’d had some time to recover from our vehicular adventures in Croatia. The hotel arranged for a car to be delivered there, and after some paperwork we were on our way in our tiny little Smartcar. I immediately regretted getting a car when we discovered that we couldn’t get to our next hotel because a giant water truck was blocking the narrow road leading to it. After we finally got within sight of the hotel, we couldn’t find any place to park. I double-parked (possibly triple-parked – hard to tell with all the cars and trucks haphazardly piled into a semi-parking lot), and Grace managed to dump our bags in the lobby and get on the road again.
We didn’t get very far before stopping for lunch just down the road (sampling the local specialty, tomatokeftedes, or fried tomato fritters — in foreground below). They may not look particularly appealing in the photo, but they were quite tasty. In fact, we had more at dinner.
Eventually we managed to make our way through the congested town of Fira and on to the other side of the island. All along we were looking for an ATM because we were out of euros. Our destination was Akrotiri, the archaeological site. Surely they would take credit cards, right? No, they would not, and we had only three euros, which was not enough for admission. This is a little bit pathetic, that a 54-year old woman is traveling around a foreign country with three euros in her purse (and possibly some useless kuna). Oh well, by this point we had seen more than a few archaeological sites, so we were not heartbroken. Instead we walked down the road then hiked a slightly precarious path to what is known as Red Beach.
Later we heard that Red Beach is technically closed because it’s so dangerous. That red cliff apparently is destined to crumble down any moment. Luckily it did not collapse while we were there.
Here’s geologist Grace inspecting the rocks, fortunately not starting an avalanche.
A puzzle: three abandoned doors leading into the cliff. Grace got one open and found…a kitchen. Our theory is that there was once a restaurant here, or perhaps several.
Late that afternoon we checked into our new hotel, the Chromata. When we planned the Santorini portion of the trip Grace asked if there would be an infinity pool, so that was pretty much my sole criterion for a hotel. The Chromata was not in Oia, which is by far the best town on Santorini, but rather in Imeroviglio, which has spectacular views because it’s higher in elevation than Oia but is not much of a town. Our room was built into the cliff, like the one the night before, except that this was a more upscale cave with only the bathroom looking cave-like.
It started raining again – Day Two of no sunset – but we still had one night left to watch the famous Santorini sunset. Imerovigli can hardly be called a town — just a lot of hotels and very few restaurants, so we had a bit of trouble figuring out where to eat dinner. Our first choice was full, primarily because half the restaurant was out of bounds due to the whipping wind and rain. (Our weather luck was not perfect on this trip.) Our second choice was fine.
Back in our room, we both had to rinse out our light-colored cardigans because they were covered with little brown spots. Had we been splashed walking back from Oia in the rain the night before? It was mysterious.