I'm On A Boat

Ok, so when you think of Greece, you actually think of Santorini, not Mykonos as I previously thought. The island of Santorini provides breathtaking views from everywhere. It is shaped like a fishhook now, but it used to be a complete circular island, but before 1600 BC the volcano called Thera erupted and completely destroyed most of the island and its inhabitants, and even destroyed the northern coast of Crete. Some archeologists even believe that there was a land mass between Thera and Crete that sunk into the sea after the eruption, inspiring the myth of Atlantis. After the eruption, Egyptians, Romans, Venetians, and Turks populated it and influenced much of the architecture and culture of today. The name Santorini comes from the patron saint, Saint Irene of Thessalonika, who died on the island in 304. In Italian, her name is Sant’Irini and it stuck as the name. Since the Italians had such an influence on the island, there are more Catholic Churches in Santorini than in the rest of Greece. The capital city Thera is surrounded by cliffs that show different levels of volcanic debris laid down after each eruption.

From where the ship was anchored, the only way to reach Thera was to take cable cars up the cliffs or ride a donkey. We decided to take the cable cars, but almost immediately regretted it because the donkeys were just too darn cute! At least we saved them the work. Anyways, the shopping was far too expensive so we walked around and tried to find out if we could get to a beach easily. The night before, while we were at Skywalkers, I talked with one of the musicians on the ship who told me that we should rent 4 wheelers and drive to the beach. So I was hooked on that idea, but everyone else wanted to just take a taxi. We found a nice shop and asked the owner the name of a good beach to go to, and then we found a taxi that would take us there. We ended up near the city of Parissa, on the complete opposite end of the island, on a black sand beach. It was incredible since I had never seen anything like it, but everyone else seemed to have already experienced a black sand beach in Hawaii. We laid out on the warm sand, weary of the black clouds starting to form above us, but nonetheless, happy that we had a beach day. It started pouring down rain and we ran into a bar called Paradise to wait out the rain. It didn’t last too long, but we caught up on some sleeping and reading before hitting the beach again.

After another hour or so, we all got hungry and went to the restaurant next to Paradise and got some pretty authentic Greek food, which was amazing. I wish I could remember the name of some of the things we ate, but I guess its not that important. We ate this fried cheese thing that was to die for and my main meal was chicken (go figure) marinated in olive oil. Chris got swordfish and Jessica and Jack got the same meat dish. We were all satisfied and ready to lay out some more, but it was time to head back to the ship. We got a taxi called there about 20 minutes later and made the last cable cars and the last tender ship back to the big ship.
After we got settled in again and woke up from our daily nap time, we ate dinner and changed for the 12th time for the Movie Under the Stars, which was Leap Year. The boys complained, but they ended up liking the movie. We were once again completely exhausted and decided to call it an early night, even though the next day was the day at sea…