July 24 - Athens to Santorini

Jez, Andrea and I were staying together in a room together and woke up before 6am so we could get down to the port to catch the ferry to our first Greek island: Santorini. Bleary eyed, we headed downstairs and met 6 other people that we would be spending the next week with. A few more people had caught a ferry the day before. In typical Jane Taylor style, see had organized this week down to when we could take our bathroom breaks, but failed to book the ferry tickets she told us to book far enough in advance. This resulted in her and a few others being forced to catch the overnight ferry. Apparently, this trip was not a 5 star luxury cruise. They were out on the deck and didn’t get much sleep on account of the bunch of drunk Aussies next to them making noises to the wee hours of the morning. When this finally subsided, they were kept awake by the cleaners throwing out the empty bottles into bins. Not something you can fall asleep to.

But enough about stuff that didn’t happen to either myself or Jez! Back in Athens, we boarded our ferry which turned out to be very uneventful. We played some backgammon and got a bit of shut eye in anticipation of the Greek tsunami that we were about to encounter.

We found our hostel, which was run by George. George is a born and breed Santorinian who is one of the most helpful people we have met on out trip so far. Working with him was a guy about our age who we didn’t remember/know his name. He was simply referred to as either George’s Protégé or George Junior. That afternoon, we hung around by the pool and got to know the area we were staying in which (thanks to Jane) happened to be very central.

That night, we headed to one of the restaurants that George recommended and we had booked earlier in the day. When we went to book it, the manager skeptically asked our we found out about his restaurant. All we had to do was drop Georges name to see a big smile cross his face and his reluctance disappear. So, there was about 20 of us sitting in the middle of the restaurant in 2 tables of 10. Half of us went for the moussaka, which is a very authentic Greek lasagna with egg plant in it. As the dinner wore on, the conversation got louder and cruder. As we were walking out, one of the other patrons of the restaurant gave us the ultimate insult/compliment by assuming that we were on a Contiki tour.

That night we headed out to Murphy’s (obviously a Irish pub) and danced the night away.

Ciao,

Monty