La Pausa di Primavera 2009!

Just a forewarning--the pictures may not match up well with my tales of adventure.  Blogspot apparently hates me, and made it quite difficult for me :)

View from Oia

Ciao! So for my spring break post…this one is going to be long! And the moral of the whole tale…NEVER fly Alitalia! Santorini was so beautiful, though.

OK. So Friday, we took the day to pack and get ready. The other group of people left a few hours before us, and Allee, Rebecca and I headed to the airport at about 5 for our 7:20 flight. All was going well, we checked in, were waiting on our plane and….delay. So it gets to the point where our flight into Rome (connection to Athens) was so delayed that we missed our connection flight. So our entire plane is at ticketing getting their flights re-figured out. We ended up having to wait 2 or 3 hours for our flight overall, and they told us that they were putting us up in Rome for the night and putting us on the next flight in the morning. SO. We get to Rome and…they didn’t know we were coming. No one called them and told them an ENTIRE plane of people were about to show up in need of hotels. So they scrambled to figure that out, and after a long process of people trying to get bags (thank goodness I just had carry-ons!) we all got on a charter bus. They then proceeded to drive us to the wrong hotel, and the whole group of people had to walk around Rome at midnight to find the right hotel. We sleep for about two hours, get up again and get to the airport, and get on our flight to Athens. PHEW! We were put in first class, because all the angry Italians from the night before complained so much; so that was nice! And no offense to any of you Canadians, but…there was this BIG Canadian high school tour group getting on our Athens flight, and one of the girls didn’t get on the plane. Seriously, A) how do 5 chaperones lose a girl between the gate and the plane, and B) how did that girl not have ANY friends who realized she was gone?!?! So we had to wait for that for a while, and all I could think of was the song from South Park “Blame Canada.” Allee and I got a huge laugh out of that one, for sure.

We arrive in Athens and get to our hotel at about 12. Our hotel was in a REAL sketch area, but it was ok because the hotel itself wasn’t bad. We dropped our stuff and went out to hit the Acropolis, but when we got there at 3 it had just closed. What a comedy of errors! Fo’ real. Anyway, we explored for a while, checked out the market and some ruins. That night we went to sleep early, and then woke up real early the next morning. We ran to the Acropolis at 8 and got to go in right when it opened, and it was a free day (YAY). It was so worth it…the best thing Athens had to offer. It was really humbling walking amongst those buildings. Here are a few shots:

Black Sand beach!

First view of the Parthenon

First day in Athens

Allee, Rebecca and I

Caryatids

So, after we zipped through the Acropolis, we headed to the airport to go to Santorini, and thankfully there were no delays! We got to the Santorini airport and the man (Katinas) from our hotel was waiting for us. He was really nice, if not slightly crazy. The view on the drive was amazing…anywhere you are on that island you can see the water. Beautiful. We got to our hotel and I was so happy because it was absolutely beautiful. From one window in our room you could see the pool, and further on the ocean, and from the other window you could see the mountains. There were green fields everywhere, and donkeys and horses chilling out right there. We were about a ten-minute leisurely walk from the black sand beach.

View off our balcony

The next day, we woke up early-ish and had breakfast. Katinas drove us to Fira, the main city of Santorini. We looked around in some shops and walked around, and then we walked down to the port. It was hundreds of steps, and at every level their were donkeys waiting to take you down. We were a little sketched out by that though (and by the donkey poop at every step) so we just walked. AMAZING view. We got down to the port and got on a boat that took us to the volcano that formed the island. It was a really nice boat ride, and a beautiful day. So we get to the (active) volcano and they let us loose for about an hour. We walked all over and it was a pretty good hike—there were some spots on the volcano that were spouting sulfurous gas, which was a little nervewracking. There were red flowers coating the ground, and the view down to the water was beautiful. It was a really neat experience to climb on a volcano, and I stole a rock! (Shhh….)

Me on the liquid hot magma mountain of death...

The volcano!

After the volcano, we got back onto the boat and they took us to the hot springs. They told us we could go in, so the whole boat (mostly Americans/English) jumped right on in and the boat drivers were just laughing… it was FREEZING. They told us to swim a little further into the springs, but it never got warmer. They were definitely not hot springs, but ice cold springs. It was ok though, because I swam in the Mediterranean! It was a fun experience, although I am lucky I didn’t get pneumonia ☺ The boat ride back was really nice too, and we dried off in the warm breeze. We took a somewhat jankety cable car back up the mountain, but I thought that it was really fun!

When we got back into Fira Katinas met us and took us on a driving tour of the top half of the island. We saw the typical view of Greek islands—the white/blue houses built into the cliff and it was so pretty everywhere we went. We walked around Oia, another town, and then climbed down the port to meet him. It was a little overcast, so the sunset wasn’t that great, but it was still pretty. We got back to the hotel and relaxed/hung out some more, and ordered in food.

March 31st we slept late (YAY) and then Katinas told us at breakfast that we could go on a wine tasting. He took us to a little family run winery, and we got to try 5 different kinds of wine. The wine man was very nice and explained to us the process of creating and bottling the wine, and I had no idea how complicated it was! Their wine trees are trained to grow very low to the ground on curved branches to keep them out of the dangerous winds.

After the wine tasting, we laid out on the beach for a while. I got sunburned, and my nose was BRIGHT red, but now I’ve got a little tan ☺ The black sand beach was really cool, but not really sand—it was more like tiny pebbles. And in the water, there was no sand, but a giant rock formation because of the way the island was formed. When the sun was high in the sky, it was really hard to walk on the pebbles because they got SO hot. It was really nice to just lay on the beach and hear the waves. Since it’s not high season there yet, the whole island was relatively quiet. There weren’t too many things open, and there really weren’t that many people, but I liked that. After we sat on the beach for a few hours, Rebecca and I went horseback riding for two hours on the beach (Allee is scared of horses). My horse was a little crazy, but it was still so much fun. We were right on the beach and in the water, which has always been a dream of mine to do. Fantastic! That night we went to dinner at a little place and had real good food, and a free drink!

Wine man, Me, Allee, Rebecca

Me on my horse

Rebecca and I on our horses

Our last day our flight was not until 10:30, so we were able to hang around. We kept our room for 20-euro day rate, and woke up late, ate breakfast and went to the beach. We laid out for a while, and then had lunch at a really neat Tahitian themed place right on the beach. Afterwards, we sat by the pool for a while, and then showered and got ready to head out. We ate dinner, and Katinas drove us to the airport. Our flight to Athens went as planned, and we got there about 11:30. Our flight the next day was at 7, so we decided to just stay in the airport. We stayed there that night and then the next morning got on our flight to Rome just fine.

Of course, good old Alitalia, our flight from Rome to Naples was delayed. We didn’t realize how delayed, because it was just about 30 minutes and then we sat on the plane for a while. So by the time we got to Naples and got baggage, we were two hours late. No time for Pompeii, unfortunately. So, we just got on a train back to Florence. At that point we were grumpy from the travel woes, and it was just me and Allee—Rebecca went to Vienna to see her sister. By the time Allee and I got back to Florence we were so happy to be home—it’s weird how much we missed Florence. It was so nice to get back!

Friday Allee and I relaxed all day, watched tv and chilled (that was SO nice). Saturday I went to Pitti Palace and went through all the museums. I was in the Boboli gardens for a little bit, but then it started raining. I walked around a little bit then, and was glad to get out and see some of Florence. Today (Sunday) I went to Santa Croce and sat in on a little bit of Palm Sunday mass which was nice. Then I went to Academia and saw David, and he is so much amazing the second time around! I walked through there, and then went to San Lorenzo leather market. It’s a little intimidating going through there alone, because people try and get you to buy things, but I still enjoyed it. It was a nice day to walk around!

So that’s my spring break. Whew! Santorini was absolutely beautiful. I would recommend it, especially in open season when so much more will be going on.