Ok, let me preface this story. Molly has an abnormally large briefcase that she likes to call a laptop case that she used as her carry-on and has taken on previous vacations. We all picked on her and her briefcase so in order to try and make up for it, she tried to make us all jealous because she was able to "ramp" her briefcase over curves. We were going to be gone for 10 days so she decided that the briefcase didn't provide adequate room so she borrowed a suitcase from her Spanish boyfriend, Joshua. On our walk back from dinner she asked Kristen if she should try to ramp her suitcase over the curb which was more like a ledge given that it was a foot tall. Kristen obviously encouraged her to do so and she ran full speed toward the curb, ran her suitcase into the curb only it wasn't able to make jumps quite as easily as the briefcase. Her suitcase was still below the curb and she was holding the handle in her other hand. Funniest thing ever. She then had to carry her suitcase for a mile and a half to our ship. We got on the ship and immediately found a movie room that we thought would be a perfect place to be able to sleep on the 5 hour ferry ride. The seats reclined and they were playing a movie, seemed to be the perfect place to relax--oh how we were wrong. Within 5 minutes of sitting in the room, a baby started crying right in my ear. The mother apologized saying that he was a newborn, the child looked to be about 2. I finally fell asleep (the baby literally cried the entire ferry ride) when all of a sudden the armrest of my chair comes crashing down on my head. Someone in the baby's party hit my armrest and I had a legit bump on my head for the rest of our trip. To make matters even worse a creepy man from Pakistan literally stared at me, Kristen, and Molly the entire ferry ride (Stina and Leah were fortunate enough to have an entire row to themselves at the front of the room).
We finally made it to Santorini at 5:30 in the morning and found the van for our hostel that offered free transportation to and from the port. We got in the van and were on our way to the hostel, commenting on how surprisingly smooth our traveling was going so far when all of a sudden boom, we have a flat tire. Our driver speaks no English so he calls the owner of the hostel and explains to him in Greek that we have a flat tire and then hands the phone to Kristen. The owner of the hostel explains that another van is on the way and should be there soon, Kristen then relays that message to the other people in our van--3 Chilean boys and 4 other American girls. 5 minutes later another van pulls up and we all start climbing out of the van, Molly literally was about to open the door when the van zooms away. We are all stranded on the side of the highway, in Greece, at 6 o'clock in the morning. We all just kind of hung out, clearly asking if we are being punked, when 30 minutes later another van finally pulls up. We never really received an explanation for that. We got to our hostel which was awesome. For 10 euros per person/per night, we had a 5 person room with our own bathroom and kitchen 30 feet away from the beach. The first day we just laid out on the beach all day and then we were getting ready to go out and started talking to the Chilean boys and we all ended up going out together. They were so nice, they were 25 and had just graduated from engineering school and were just traveling around. They were only in Santorini for a night but it was really fun, we salsa danced with them all night at this club.
There are a ton of stray dogs in Santorini who found us everywhere we went. We were laying on the beach the first day when this cute little black dog, which Molly named "Taco", came up to us. On our way back from the club, Taco was laying in the chair in the lobby of the hostel so we assumed that maybe he wasn't a stray after all and that he must be the hostel owners dog. It looked like Taco had had a bath, he was much cleaner than he was earlier, so Molly and I picked Taco up and brought him back to our room with us to show Stina. Stina was already peacefully sleeping and we layed Taco next to her. She didn't appreciate this very much so we decided that we should probably put Taco back. We laid out on the beach again all day Saturday and then decided that we should probably try to see a lot of the island so that night we rented four-wheelers to tour the island on Sunday. It was only 15 euros for a 24 hour rental, best purchase I've made in awhile. We woke up on Sunday and it wasn't very pretty, unlike the first two days, but we headed off on our four-wheelers anyway. I wish it had been prettier but we got to see the coolest red rock beach and rode all through these small towns. Our four-wheelers were really fast, at one point I was going 57 km/h (don't really know how fast that is in mph but I felt like I was flying haha). We rode all over the island though and we were going up this mountain that is the highest point on Santorini and we were literally in a cloud. It was actually pretty scary because the road was so small and all of sudden a truck would come flying down the mountain on the other side so we decided to turn around and eat a picnic overlooking the countryside of Greece. It started raining on our way back and we still had like a 30 minute ride back to our hostel so we stopped in Fira, the capital of Santorini and some tapas (well a Greek pizza) until the rain cleared. That night we ate one of the best meals I have had since I've been here. All of us love sharing food (except Stina was on her own) we ordered 4 tapas to share and then Molly and I split prawns and musaka, a typical Greek meal, which tasted more like lasagna with potatoes.
We had booked a sailing tour around Santorini for Monday but when we woke up it was still raining but we decided to go anyways. After climbing down 170 steps to get to the old port (my calves were literally shaking when I got to the bottom) we boarded our sailboat that has the capacity to hold 160 people but there were only 15 people on our tour. Our first stop was at an active volcano that used to be attached to Santorini but after it erupted in 1957, it became detached from the island. It was pouring down rain, our tour guide kept urging us to turn around but we wanted to see the top of the volcano. It was so cool, there is an active crater at the top and smoke was pouring out of it. Our next stop was to hot-springs which we assumed the boat docked and you walked over to the hot-springs, man were we wrong. Our tour guide got on the microphone and said in order to visit the hot-springs you had to be a good swimmer because you had to dive off of the boat and swim 100 meters to the springs. The temperature of the hot-springs depends on the temperature outside and she said that they would probably be about 20-22 degrees Celsius because it was so cold out meaning that the ocean water was like 16, how could we resist. I dove off of the boat and the temperature was literally shocking but we made it over to the hot-springs which turned out to not be so hot after all but there was this really cool mud at the bottom that supposedly opens your pores. The horn on the boat blew signaling that we had to swim back. I have never been colder in my life. I literally felt like there was a needle in every pore in my body. I thought this Chinese girl was going to drown, everybody (only 8 people from our boat went in the water, us being 5 of them) had already passed her and her lips were literally blue. Our tour guide was holding the little life-saver circle because she thought the girl wasn't going to make it back but she did! Our last stop was at Oia where we had to climb up 171 steps to be in the town. It was beautiful though, the weather had finally started clearing up and when we were walking up the steps there was a bride standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean having her wedding pictures taken. I wonder if they know how beautiful of a place they live in. We wandered around some stores in Oia and then took a taxi back to Fira (we had missed the bus by 5 minutes and the next one didn't come for 2 hours). The other girls went back to our hostel but Molly and I wandered around Fira, did some souvenir shopping, and then went to this restaurant and split a bottle of wine and hummus before taking the bus back to Perissa (the town our hostel was in). Molly, Kristen, and Leah's ferry left at 12:30am on Monday because they were going to Paris and Barcelona for the rest of Semana Santa but Stina and I stayed in Santorini for another flight and took the 3:30 ferry back to Athens. Greece was one of the prettiest places I have ever been, I really want to go back one day and venture to another island. Thanks mom and dad!
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