Santorini and the Worst Transportation in Europe

The group decided to take Istambul off the itinerary, and to make ourselves feel better about it we added a few days to the Greek Island portion of the trip (which was originally supposed to be a day trip). In Athens we booked a ferry trip to Santorini, and we spend most of our time in Athens getting excited to go to Santorini. We were all set to take the ferry in, arrive at 8pm, and go see what the island's nightlife had to offer, but the boat was 2 hours late to pick us up. We made friends with the lady next to us onthe ferry, and she was kind enough to translate for us when the crew announced that we wouldn't arrive in Santorini until 12:30am. Our resolve was only strengthened to go have fun, however, so when we arrived at our hostel at 1 in the moring we freshened up and then headed for Fira, Santorini's most popular town. It was the only time in my whole life that I stayed up past sunrise and wasn't doing homework.

The next day we had breakfast at noon and then spent some time on the black sand beach of Parissa, just a 5 minute walk from our hostel (which was all white and blue and had a swimming pool!). We walked up along the beach to see the restaurants and shops and found a place that offered scuba diving and snorkeling excursions, and decided to do some sorkeling the next day. I had never done it before and was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do it right (I remember hearing Heather's story), but it was actually really easy (sorry, Heather). There weren't any coral reefs or anything like that, but we saw some pretty fish and the water was so blue and so so clear. We got to go through some caves, too, but I thought of that scary movie where they go cave diving and then it was less pleasant.

On the way out to the snorkeling spots, the guides drove the boat really fast so that it was comparable to riding a jet ski. There was a family of four going on the excursion with us, and the mom fell off theboat on a particularly large bump. She was okay, butI think her daughter was traumatized for life and cried a lot, that was a downer. The rest of the trip went off without a hitch, though, and Megan even got to pee in the ocean.

True to Greek form, the ferry to go back to the mainland was late picking us up from Santorini. The island was beautiful and so fun, and we were sad to have to go back to Athens for the last day.