First Day in Santorini

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Written on 5/26/06, 12:33 AM on our patio overlooking the town of Fira, weather is about 72º with a comfy breeze.

May 25, 2006, my birthday!

It was like a modern-day Greek tragedy for Eric...

I am feeling much better today than I did yesterday. No fainting episodes today. In fact I felt rejuvenated. It was a new day and we were on our way to Santorini.

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We started the day around 8 AM. Got a quick breakfast before we headed to Athens airport. I didn’t really notice it when we arrived but this particular airport was actually quite nice. They’ve done a lot of work to it having hosted the 2004 Summer Olympics. I can only imagine how busy it must’ve been during that time.

Our 32-seater prop plane landed Santorini at 1 PM. Santorini, the jewel of the Cyclades, is an island of stunning beauty. The island was created by a volcanic eruption that lies in the middle of the island's bay. Around it, like a crescent moon, is the remains of the island that sank - a huge rock, multicolored, black, red, gray, and brownish. High up on the ridge of the rock are the white crowns of houses, arches, terraces, and churches with their domes. These are the towns of Fira, Firostefani, Imerovigli, and Ia.

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It was much cooler here than in Athens. Caught a 20-minute taxi ride to our hotel, Santorini Princess. We drove through the town of Fira, which is known for its labyrinth of shops, restaurants and nightclubs. It looked pretty frenzied with tourists, vendors, cars, bikes and motorcycles.

Achilles who is the manager and the owner of the hotel greeted us. Eric took care of the arrangements while I browsed through the many things we can do around this island. We were then taken on a tour of the entire hotel. I was very impressed by the exclusiveness of this hotel. Apparently it only has 30 apartment-style rooms. Eric and I are very into the VIP treatment, even though we were like, “who we kidding”? After lunch at the hotel restaurant I, of course, rested while Eric checked out the Internet.

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I also have to note that Eric is currently in a heated challenge with his annual Fantasy Baseball league. He is, at every chance he gets, checking his stats and reporting back to me that the Yankees either won or lost, among other things. This had been since we landed in Athens. He agreed to shell out 18 Euros per day for Internet connection in our room to keep up with the games and manage his dream team. And then the unfortunate happened. My password was not working, locking us out of my MAC. I could see in his eyes how sad he was, insisting I make an international call to have my help desk make it work again. It wasn’t looking good – no call back, even after the 2 messages I left. He was without sight of how his team and rivals were performing. It was like a modern-day Greek tragedy for Eric, being so intense about the competition. Anyway, at Santorini airport I decided to give it another shot. Success! My password worked again. But the new hotel we’re staying at does not offer room connections. Lucky for him, there are 2 computers with Internet access in the lounge. He didn’t care that he had to walk there as long as he had visibility to the game at hand.

After all that, Eric went to hang out at the pool. I followed an hour later since I was at the conclusion of my book. I finally finished “Angels & Demons” – my next book is “The Kite Runner”.

The pool experience today was much better than yesterday’s. It was not as hot and there was n o passing out. I made sure to drink lots of water and not to mention it was about 6 PM. Went back to the room around 8, got ready and made our way in to the town of Fira for dinner.

As I mentioned before, Fira is like a labyrinth. We must’ve walked around the entire town four or five times not knowing we were going in circles. For dinner Eric had pork souvlaki, cousin to gyro, and I had grilled squid. Eric was in heaven once again.

We decide to call it a night, heading back to our hotel at midnight. Tomorrow, we’ll be hitting the infinity-style pool, getting in our rented Smart car and going on an adventure around this island. Until then…