Day 23: September 27. Biker chics.

We started the day with an extremely quick breakfast, and dashed to make the 850 bus from Oia to Fira, which is the main city on Santorini. There we purchased our ferry tickets for tomorrow back to Athens (for real this time!) and we rented an ATV for the day! It was fairly cheap, and don't worry...the rental fee included helmets.

We started on our way, driving toward the lighthouse at the southern tip of the island. Alicia drove first, having had minimal experience driving one out in Minnesota as a kid. We took in the view of the whole island there, noting where we began in Oia and where we rented the ATV in Fira. From here, Karla took the handlebars and delivered us safely to the Red Beach.

Once we parked, we had to walk about 5 min to get to the actual beach, over and around the cliffs. The Red Beach gets its name from the giant red cliffs that are the backdrop to the beach. The sand itslef is even a muddy red tint! It was beautiful, but windy and a bit chilly, and much more crowded than our beach yesterday. We were thankful that we picked yesterday to be our beach day!

After a quick juice stop at a grocery store, we arrived in Pigros for lunch. Then we carried on to the highest mountain on Santorini, crowned by a monastary. It was unfortunately closed (we haven't been having much luck with religious edifaces here!), and we were very thankful that for once we hadn't walked up! We walked around the monastary to the bare rocks on top of the mountain, and took in the scenery for quite some time. We could see the ocean on 3 sides, and 3 other Greek islands!

We spent some time trying to figure out whether this panorama would make us believe the world was round or flat, the hopped back on our 4-wheeler, heading south again toward the town of Perissa. This beach was named as the nicest on the island by one of our tour books, but Karla and I still prefer our little isolated beach in Oia! Nonetheless, we relaxed there for a while, although it was by this time a bit too chilly to swim.

Next on our biker tour was a small vineyard in Megalochori called Antione's. We sampled a white, a red and a dessert wine. Shockingly, the dessert wine was by far the best...the white and the red were very lack-lustre and simple. Karla thought it must be because the conditions are so comparatively harsh here for grapes.

The wine tasting over, we went back to Fira to grab a quick bite before taking the ATV to a place we had scoped out along the caldera to watch the sunset. It was much cloudier this evening than last night, but our spot was ideal because we not only had a great view of the main event, but also of the volcanic island in the middle of the caldera.

After sunset, we returned our ATV and explored Fira on foot for a couple of hours. Fira too seemed much less crowded than Oia did that first night, but maybe we're just getting used to the tourist mob!

We took a bus back to Oia for our last night in Santorini. Tomorrow afternoon we leave for Athens!
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Day 22: Sept 26. A day of rest.

We had a leisurely breakfast this morning on the terrace overlooking the Aegean, then meandered down to the beach, which is a 15 minute walk from our hostel in Oia. It was beautiful! The sea was a vivid aquamarine closest to the shore, and a deep blue further out. We (finally!) spent a fully relaxing day swimming, reading and napping in the bright sunshine between the cliffs.

We walked back up (another hill!) to our hostel around 530. There we rinsed off, then ate a quick dinner (those €2 gyros are keeping us going!), and walked back down toward the beach. Oia is known for its views of the sunset over the caldera, so we decided we had to see it at least one night! The sun seemed to melt into the horizon, becoming a vivid orange-red before it disappeared. We sat on the beach watching the last pinks and oranges of the sunset fade into the deep blue night sky, then walked back up to our hostel in the dark. But fear not, avid readers: we came prepared with our flashlights to light our way home!

We took care of some business this evening, and are now settling in for the night. Karla is currently icing down my back which got a tad sunburned despite my careful application and re-application of sunscreen. Come to think of it, Karla did my back...
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Day 21: Sept 25: If I could walk five hundred miles...

I know you guys know we like to walk, but there does come a point were being tired and hungry and following a terrible map can make you crazy.

We got to that point.

So today we woke up earlyish to grab the complimentary breakfast of bread, cake, tea, and juice at 830. It was nice but not quite enough. Next time we'll grab yogurt the night before. We then took a bus to Fira/Thira where we could catch another bus to the southern part of the island. The bus rides themselves aren't that long, but between waiting for the buses and the connections it took a long time. Overall the bus system is not visitor friendly at all. No stops or roads are marked. To get to any other town not between you and Thira, you have to go to Thira first. The bus stops also don't have the schedules there most of the time. It could come every hour or half hour depending on the stop. We ran into a couple problems later, but not too bad since we were doing mostly walking (the special student discount ride). Actually riding is around a euro and a half each time you get on. It adds up.

Upon arriving at Perissa, a popular beach, we most immediately started walking up in the hot sun (not a cloud in the sky) with our long sleeve shirts on (someone had said it was going to rain all day) to the top of a barren 396 meter high mountain/hill towards what were supposedly Roman and ancient ruins. The oldest dating to the 3rd century BC. The Romans had discovered ruins from the Minoan civilization and built a city nearby. The giant eruption (one of the largest in history) was in 1650 BC and wiped out life on the island until around the 3rd century. Anyway, the ruins were actually really extensive. We were impressed after having walked so long with no sign of ruins. And, it was free!

By the time we were starving and decided we could get to food the fastest by walking down the other side of the mountain (which was the second highest point on the island). When we got to Kamari, another beach town, we downed juice, a cheese pie, and two delicious gyros. But they are just so good...

From here we tried getting into a couple of beautiful churches but they were locked. So we took a bus to the center of the island to check out some other cute towns. Of course, streets and towns were not marked (we had the map and were trying to be careful!) And we went too far. Being stubborn, we walked (after grabbing a delicious icecream) towards Pygros. Passing through some other towns, we didn't see nearly as many tourists, which was especially nice. When we got to Pygros (of course on a hill) we walked from one gorgeous really old church to the next, hoping to get at least a look inside one of them. No luck though. From the top we saw another larger and more promising church below and decided we had enough time before the sunset. We got lucky and were able to poke our heads in. It was very ornate, with darker colors in the frescos and dark wood furniture. We didn't stay long though and headed to the bus stop across the street hoping one would pass. When it didn't we decided to head back up closer to a bigger town. After finding another stop, we asked a couple local shop keepers when the next bus was. The only good answer we got was, "maybe around 8". And so we waited. Hoping. And it came! Amazing.

We rode back to Fira and then headed to Oia where our hostel is. We ate and then headed to our rooms. We are exhausted and are looking forward to beaching most of the day tomorrow.
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Day 20: September 24th. Transitions.

The ferry ride from Athens to Santorini was beautiful. We could see Greek islands in the distance, surrounded by miles of deep blue ocean for pretty much the entire 8 hour journey.

We landed at the port of Athinios in Santorini, and jammed onto a crowded bus to Fira, the capital city of the island. From there, we took another bus to Oia at the northern tip of the island, and checked into a hostel that looks classically Santorini. It's just beautiful here: the tops of the churches really are painted a deep blue, and the cliffs drop dramatically into the ocean. In fact, the Greek isles in general are much more abrupt than I anticipated. There are no rolling beaches, no gradual slopes. There's the ocean, and then bam! There's a mountain! Granted, Santorini is the site of one of the biggest eruptions in the earth's history, but still.

Once we settled into our hostel, we explored Oia by foot. As we walked around, there were throngs of people lined up to see the sunset. We were overwhelmed by the crowd of tourists...overall we get a very different feel from them than we did from our fellow travelers in Turkey. This crowd seems much less likely to get up early to hike, less likely to seek out and talk to local people, and much more likely to spend all night partying, and buy a lot of useless crap. It's an interesting change of pace.

After a delicious pita dinner, we wandered the streets a bit more, trying to get our bearings. Luckily, we stumbled across a little bakery, so that we could try Greek baklava! It's in fact quite different from Turkish baklava: it's a lot thicker and heavier, and tastes of cinnamon and walnuts, instead of just walnuts and honey. The jury is still out on which is better.

Although it's still early, we're about to hit the hay...it's been a while since we slept horizontally!


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Day 19 continued

Oops. It sent before I finished.

...We got money out (€) and headed to find some dinner. After filling up on delicious pitas, we sat in the square waiting for the 1030 ferry. When the time came we got on and found some seats (much more comfy than the bus seats). We put our luggage away and tried the best we could to sleep.

We awoke on the 24th at 6am to tried to get off first and catch the 730 ferry to Santorini. When we got off, the Hellenic ferry booth was closed and we had no idea as to which part of the port we were at. Desperate, we asked a taxi driver where we could get tickets to Santorini (he was the only person who spoke english). Turns out we could take the free shuttle bus to the other side of the port where Blue Star Ferry Co was. We grabbed our deck seats and made a bee line for a table so we could eat our breakfast as the sun came up. Although it was a bit hazy, it was beautiful (hasn't rained since yesturday night). Now I'm just sitting here watching the beautiful scenery as Alicia naps across two chairs. She'd never been on such a big boat before last night. You'd think shed be more excited...haha.
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Day 19: September 23. A small SNAFU.

We awoke bright and early (we're talking before 6 am) to make our ferry from Kusadasi to Samos in Greece. We took the shuttle bus from Selcuk to Kusadasi, then arrived (after a short unexpected walk) at the ferry kiosk, to find out that the Greek crew who sail the boats to Samos are on strike and therefore our ship is not sailing. Luckily, there was a 5 pm ship that was sailing despite the strike! This of course had a snowball effect on our plans; if we couldn't take the 830 am ferry to Samos, we missed the 430pm ferry from Samos to Mykanos, which is the only boat from Samos going to the islands and the next ferry to Mykanos wasn't until Saturday!

So we had to make a decision. After a quick breakfast by the sea, we went to a travel agency to figure out our options. We decided to take the 1030 pm ferry from Samos to Athens tonight (which gets in at 630 am), then try to turn right back around to go to Santorini at 730 am. It's a lot of backtracking, but its the only way to get to Santorini before the weekend. We also had the option of visiting Peloponnese (the southern portion of Greece's mainland that's also beautiful and full of history). In the end we chose to go back down to Santorini. We both wanted a break from daily touring of ruins and different cities. We could always decide to ship back up to athens again and train or bus to the south. I guess we'll see. As they say, when in Greece...

After deciding on tickets (although everything still depended on making the 730 ferry to Santorini), we went down to the beach. Soon our fatigue overwhelmed us, so we took catnaps next to some Europeans who thought they were in Hawaii (leopard print bathing suits and all).

Waking up hungry, we searched far and wide to find a small street cafe that served turkish food. Its weird that the turkish restaurant owners think that tourists only like to eat traditional tourist food (yuck!). Finally we found a little hole in the wall disguised as a pizza place. We sat down, ordered our pides and munched on tomatoes and cucumbers (the turkish only seem to serve these two vegetables). After our meal the woman who owned the place started talking to Alicia in depth about how discouraged she was by the the Turkish education system, and how worried she was for the future of the Turkish Repbulic. The system seems to valorize education abroad over its own system by granting huge scholarships to its most promising students to study abroad, while giving little aid to the less "clever" students who really need the funding. Granted, she was complaining about having to pay $500 a semester for college for her son while her extremely "clever" cousin had full scholarships abroad. We tried to explain that people in the US pay thousands and thousands a semester, but she didn't quite understand. I guess its all relative. Still, she was very kind and gave us some insight to the Turkish life.

After this we went to the supermarket to spend our last lira (YTL). We got some crackers and a peach and headed for the ferry. It was a fairly small boat, and it was crowded on the sun deck. As we sat there waiting to leave we both felt a little sad. We had really loved our time in Turkey. As the boat took off, we stood looking back listening to the call to prayer as it was mixed with the zesty Greek music playing on the loudspeaker. We listed all the little quirky things we'd miss, all the interesting people we'd met and all the things wed learned.

We arrived in samos around 730 as the sun was setting. Instead of hearing the call to prayer we heard music. We got money out (€)
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Day 18: September 22, Goodbye to Turkey!

Had a lovely start to the day as we had a delicious (leisurely!) Turkish breakfast, then tried to get the free shuttle to Ephesus. We were planning on walking (with Daniel), but our hostel owner offered us this lift, so we decided to take it. Well it was free...after we endured the walk across town to the carpet shop where Karla very nicely entertained the owner's sales pitch before we all piled into the shuttle to Ephesus.

Within the first couple of min there, we found Jake who had gotten up early to beat the crowds, and we all wandered through the ancient Roman ruins together. Karla read to us from the guidebook, and we all learned that Ephesus was a major Roman port in Turkey, among other interesting facts about Roman life. The two most interesting edifaces were the stadium (which had fantastic acoustics! We could hear guides talking on the stage from all the way at the top of the amphitheater!), and the library which has an extremely ornate facade.

After Roman through the ruins, we walked the 3 km back into Selcuk. Along the way, we found this bizarre outdoor gym, where a bunch of equiptment normally found in a fitness center lined the street. The only thing was that it was all painted bright colors and not mechanized! We all got a big kick out of playing on it for a while...

Back in town, we ate lunch, then went to a cafe for a while to wait out the rain. By far the most exciting part of our afternoom came around 3 when the rain cleared and Jake had the wonderful idea of taking the shuttle out to the beach! It only took about 15 min to get out there, and as we arrived, the sun decided to peek out. Upon feeling the water, Daniel and we decided to go for a swim, while Jake guarded our stuff on the beach, alongside a beautiful stray dog. The water was glorious!

A couple hours later, we headed back into town and had dinner. We dropped Daniel off at the bus station, and Jake, Karla and I wandered around Selcuk for a little while. Tomorrow we move on again, this time to Greece. But we're going to miss Turkey!
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Day 17: Sept. 21: Changing plans

Awoke early on the bus, and pulled into the station at Izmir. We decided to try to stay there even though our tickets had us continuing on to Selcuk. After a bit of negotiation, using Daniel's(one of our Canadian friends) Turkish, as well as miming, we got our tickets pushed back to later in the day, leaving us free to explore Izmir.

Izmir is a modern city right on the Agean Sea. We were the only tourists that we came across pretty much the entire day! In fact, small children even stared at us....

We took a local bus from the station into the city center. It was nice to have Daniel along, especially when he took on the task of navigating the bus system for us! It was pretty much a guessing game as far as when to get off, but we ended up in almost exactly the right spot, 100 meters from one of the ports on the Agean. From there, we pulled out our newly purchased ridiculouly large street map, and found our way to the Ethnography Museum. There we learned about the usual things: camel wrestling, wedding apparel, pottery, felt-making, and the evil eye. We took a quick snack break, and then crossed the courtyard to the Archaeology Museum. Fatigued by the lack of sleep on the bus last night, we didn't stick with the archaeology all that long, nonetheless the museum was interesting.

Next we ventured into the winding streets od the city to look for the Bazaar. We found this amazing fresh produce market at the top of a long, steep hill (obviously), and took our time wandering through it, enjoying the sights and smells of the fresh fruits and veggies. We bought some peaches and figs; Alicia had never tasted the latter before, and Karla and Daniel had to stop her from eating all of them! From there we continued our search for the covered Bazaar, which we finally found. There was mostly clothing, shoes and wedding dresses, and we were finally able to pass up all the funny items on display! We had a cheap lunch of doner kebaps, before making our way back to the bus station, where Daniel re-convinced our bus company to honor our tickets to Selcuk.

The shuttle ride, although short, was far from pleasant. The shuttle attendant had put on a corny Turkish tv show at a high decible, there was a woman whose phone didn't stop ringing, and to top it all off, there was a horrendus stench in the air. At least the scenery was beautiful.

Once in Selcuk, we checked into a hostel, quickly looked for our other Canadian (Jake) who was gonna meet us here, then headed to dinner. Jake joined us as we were finishing up, and then aided our search for baklava (for Karla) and ice cream (for Alicia and Daniel).

We ate our desserts while relaxing and sipping chai in the center of town beside some arches. At this point we thought wed have a look around town as Jake had had the opporrunity to do so and he showed us the highlights. After talking to a carpet vendor at length about how many types of apricots exist and how they preserve them (it all started because Jake offered him dried apricots when they tried to sell us carpets), we walked towards the old town mosque to have a look. We arrived assuming it would be closed but it turned out that the Imam of the mosque was there at his shop and he took us through the beautifully moonlit courtyard to see the mosque. We almost took our shoes off but he told us no since the inside wasn't finished. He said Allah was inside of us and not yet in the mosque. Or something like that. It was a mishmash of new wooden renovations and ancient roman columns inside. It was pretty stunning. He was very proud and told us about the history while we starred all around us. Jake again offered him apricots in thanks and he offered to write our names in arabic as a gift. They were written on beautiful cards which had images of painted tile and embroidery. He showed us the symbols for love and respect in the images as he happily ate his apricots. He was just so so nice to open the mosque for us and on top of that give us the cards. He told us to come back tomorrow for discounts on his ceramics. He said he didn't believe in tourist prices. What a nice man.

We meandered back to the hostel thinking about all of the unexpected adventures we'd had that day and were extremely pleased. All very tired from a night on the bus, we made a bee line for our beds (after a hot shower). Good night!
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Day 16: Sept 20: Hide and Seek

Today we explored the open air museum and some nearby caves. The museum was a missionary school founded by Saint Basil. Everything dated back to the 11th through 13th centuries, but I was a little skeptical about the frescos. It was hard for me to believe that so much remained on exposed walls that are soft and crumbly (hardened volcanic ash). Regardless they were pretty cool, even if they were not as old. We also saw many banquet tables (the only furniture left except for the holes in the walls and floors).

We went with two other canadians to the museum (we'd met one of them on the train from Ankara). We spent a couple hours there exploring and realized that tour groups ruined the magic we had experienced the day before when exploring the undergound cities and the caves at Selime. That and the fact that it was about 15 bucks to get in. The plus was that our tickets got us into the oldest and largest of the cave churches in the region that was down the street. It impressed us with its size and multiple levels. Its frescos were especially vivid (they had described them as livid).

We made our way back into town to buy our overnight bus tickets to Selcuk (on the western coast, south of Izmir). Then after refueling with turkish pizzas for lunch, we headed back towards the caves across the road from the museum. Although these weren't as well kept or preserved, there were endless caves to be explored that were still very impressive (and free). It was like we were in some martian land. Its hard to describe, but if you can imagine cones pointing upwards of various sizes and widths, piled within a landscape of steep hills and deep valleys that were then carved out often with two to three floors within a cone. They say it looks like where star wars was filmed (the first one). We'll add pictures eventually.

We wandered back to the hostel in the afternoon to shower and eat before our 7pm bus. We should get to Selcuk around 9am but we are trying to change our plan to get off at Izmir at 8 so we don't have to backtrack. See you tomorrow!
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