Another adventure comes to an end

Today we spent the morning and early afternoon in Santorini getting things organized and packed.  We head back to Athens later this afternoon in order to be able to catch our 6:00 AM flight out of Athens in the morning.

Some were able to take a final run or walk around Oia, others did some last minute shopping.  All of us just enjoyed the last remaining hours in this beautiful part of Greece.

Raymont came at 9:00 AM and brought us our final breakfast in Santorini, We are seriously going to miss this part of our daily routine.  We left the villa a little after 2:00 and headed up to the main path and stopped for one last cold beverage before heading over to meet Raymont and our transportation to the airport.

After arriving in Athens, we found ourselves transportation to the hotel and also set up time with the driver to pick us up at 3:30 AM to head back to the airport.

By the time we got ourselves to our rooms, it was already about 8:00 PM.  We headed up to the hotel restaurant for dinner and then back to our rooms to hopefully get a few hours of sleep before it would be time to continue the journey home.  We had just about settled in when a text came in from the other room, we had forgotten to take our typical end of trip picture.  So we crawled out of bed and headed over to the other room where we piled onto a bed and managed to get ourselves a picture, without the bed breaking.  

I ran across this a few months ago, I have changed it a bit and I have no idea who the original author of these words are, but I love it.

In a world that tells us we can do all things alone, the truth is, we need people.  People who inspire us to do things we never would have tried, to go places we never would have gone.  People who just flat out believe in us and love us regardless of our inabilities, our mistakes and our bad days.  I would add the other major factor with these broads is our faith, our LOVE of Jesus.  Because we would have nothing, if it weren't for Him.

Thanks my broads for another amazing adventure.  I love you all.

The last days in Santorini

We have been spoiled here in Oia.  The location of the villa is great.  We are just a minute away from restaurants and shops, but most importantly we have a great view.

Every morning Raymont brings us a feast for breakfast and makes us our coffee.  This will be a difficult perk to no longer enjoy every morning.  Some of the broads went on runs or walks in the morning before Oia was filled with thousands of people here to enjoy the views and the shopping.  We generally would wait until the crowds thinned out at night to go out and about for dinner, shopping, etc.  I attempted to avoid the steps of death as much as possible.

One afternoon was spent visiting a local winery, the broads all really enjoyed the various wines.  The also met some other Minnesotans at the winery.  We are everywhere...

The last full day in Satorini, three of the broads decided to do the walk between Oia and Fira, which is about 14 miles round trip.  Kudos ladies, it was super hot, you are my hero’s.  There was no way I was going attempt that craziness.

A  few others got up early for the sunrise picture opportunities and then there were some broads who really just needed to sleep in and get some rest.  The afternoon was spent enjoying the view, thanking God for the decrease in humidity, and of course some shopping.

 

We had reservations for dinner at 7:00 to watch the sunset, this time from a non moving location. The food was good, the company was better.  We may have stopped for gelato afterwards...

Ta La’me my peeps

Just like a sailboat

Today we had a private sailboat charter for the afternoon/sunset tour in Oia.  This is a big deal as some of the broads are very motion sensitive and some just plain don’t want to be that close to the water, much less in it.  But they were all troopers and went along with this idea.

We met up with the transportation guy and even though we were assured that they would take our credit card payment, they didn’t.  That maybe should have been our first clue that this wasn’t necessarily going to be what was advertised.  This adventure included going to the Black, Red, and White beaches, visit the hot springs, enjoy unlimited beverages, snacks, and dinner and then finally we would watch the sunset in Oia.

It started off okay, all the broads were settled and we set sail, except we didn’t sail, this was a motor only tour.  After a few requests, we were each given a bottle of water.  We cruised right past the Red Beach and the captain said “That’s the red beach.”  Um, okay.

We “sailed” around another point, where the 400 or so year old lighthouse is located, and ended up in a small cove.  The captain told us this is where we could get off and swim, sadly this wasn’t at any of the beaches, it was just a random cove.  The good news is that everyone, I mean everyone got into the sea to float around for a bit.

Once back on board we were given a 6 oz beer or 2 oz of wine and two small bowls of snacks.  A couple of the broads were able to get one more beverage and then we were told that we couldn’t have any more because we would be drunk and they don’t have insurance. What?!?!?!

We left the cove and headed back the way we came, we asked about the Hot Springs and were told we couldn’t go there because it was too dirty and we would have to burn our swimsuits if we went into them.  Huh???

They brought us to a another cove that had several other catamarans and sailboats in it and were told we could get back into the water and that they would be preparing us dinner.  Thirty minutes later dinner was ready, basically it was pasta and some salad.  There were no beverages with dinner, not even water.

Once the sun started to set we started to head back to port and would constantly zig zag further out so that we could see the sun as it set, unfortunately this made several of the broads feel less than well.  The sunset, as they almost always are, was beautiful.

As we approached the pier the captain and crew had repeated shouting matches with other vessels as they tried to find a place to tie up.  We ended up tied off on the other side of a catamaran.  So the first hurdle was to get from the sailboat which was almost 3 feet below the deck of the catamaran.  We all managed to make that transition and then we had to get from the catamaran to the pier.   The catamaran sat about two feet below the pier and about 3 feet away from the pier.  Did I forget to mention that they had taken all of our shoes prior to getting on the sailboat and that the pier was basically all broken rock?  Again, we all managed to safely make it onto the pier, we got our shoes back and then we were off to find the shuttle back to Oia to the villa.  It may not have been what we expected, but we still made some great memories.

The epilogue to this story is the following day, some of the broads went back to the place where we booked this adventure. The sales people were very excited to hear about our trip, that is until we started to tell them what happened.  They immediately called the captain who told him that we had consumed 48 beers and 6 liters of wine. At which point Heidi said, we are a bunch of 55 year old women, if we had drank all of that we wouldn’t even be able to be here to talk to you today.  It would appear that the captain and the crew are just taking all of the alcohol for themselves, not to mention a significant amount of money and not working for it at all.

We may like each other even more...

Ta La’me peeps!

Athens and a little Santorini

Well we got the boot from the ship today.  Heidi and Diane were first off the ship at 7:10 AM, their primary job was to do a wake up knock and make sure the rest of the stragglers leaving the ship at 7:55 AM were up and moving.  We were to meet our Athens tour guide, Kristina at 8:00 AM, so the fact the Heidi and Diane were off the ship earlier worked out perfectly.   The rest of the broads disembarked, quickly gathered out luggage and found our remaining broads and Kristina.  She suggested that we immediately go to the Acropolis as it would become very busy once all of the cruise ship people disembarked so we loaded ourselves onto the bus and off went to the Acropolis while Kristina provided us nonstop commentary on different areas of Athens.

Once we arrived, we were met with two old friends, the stairs and the heat.  We began the climb up to the Acropolis and I’ll be honest the history around it, the Parthenon, and all the other sites is really interesting.  However, if you want to know more, google it people, google it. 

We headed back down and found a cute cafe where we enjoyed a breakfast mainly of yogurt, honey, fruit, juice, coffee, and water.

After breakfast we headed over to the Acropolis museum.  This is were all the actual artifacts are being kept, well except for all of those being housed in London.  Because, according to the Brits, Greece didn’t have an acceptable museum to display them, which may have been true, but they do now.  I’ll admit, I don’t generally like going to museums because most of them I have gone to stink, as in actually smell.  This one is stunning and actually has transparent floors so that you can see the continued excavation of the old city ruins that are buried below.  I sometimes struggle to wrap my mind around how much history is in this part of the world as opposed  to the states.  I would insert pictures here of the museum, but they tend to frown on you taking pictures.

We left the museum, did a quick city tour and were then dropped off at the airport to catch our flight to Santorini.  We managed to get our bags checked and through security safely.  Unfortunately some of the contents of our carry on bags did not make it through security, but we soldiered on and went down to our gate and waited patiently to board the plane.  There is no rhyme or reason to boarding the planes here, basically you see the crew getting ready at the gate and everyone forms a line and chaos ensues.  Okay, it wasn’t really that bad, it was just different.

We landed safely, found our driver and were off to the town of Oia to our villa.  We were met by the villa caretaker, Raymont.  You aren’t able to drive through the town, so he told us to leave our bags, he grabbed two of them and off we went on our short hike to the villa.  Raymont was a trooper as there were numerous steps involved.  He let us into the villa and then made 3 more trips to grab the rest of our bags.  We figured out who was going to sleep where in the villa, had a brief rundown on the workings and then Raymont left for the evening.  We headed out to find some dinner and then came back and all crashed early as it was a long day.

Here are a few quick shots from the veranda of the villa this evening.

 

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.  Yes, we definitely still like each other.

Ta La’me