Day 6: Santorini - This one's short I promise

Travel day today and we're both starting to feel a bit exhausted.  We've been pushing hard to fit as much as we can in the short time we have and it's finally caught up with us.  Luckily, Santorini is that type of place where we can just unwind for the next couple of days until it's time to come home.  We started off with a weird message from our Vrbo host in Santorini asking if we'd received an itinerary change notice from SeaJets, the company owning the ship that would take us from Hiraklion to Thira at 45 it's?  Of course, I've had my phone in airplane mode all week and just using a global wifi hub I brought with me for communication.  So I got a bit worried, but turns out the company had simply move us from the NAXOS ship to the EliteJet with the same times.  Crisis averted.  Or non existent really.

We arrived at the port via a brand new Mercedez-Benz... Taxi?!? What's with that Europe? A Mercedez where I'm from is not what you buy to turn into a Taxi.  This wasn't the first one I'd seen either.  I mean I'm not complaining.  I'm not one to shy away from riding in style.  

We paid cash, as of course he doesn't have a card machine with him and queued up with the rest of the island hoppers.  I upgraded our ticket to club class which gave us access to the upstairs club lounge and deck which was designed to hold at least 200 to 300 people, but today's load was light and we were forced to share it with maybe a couple dozen.

We moved seats a couple times just cause we could.

The ride was smooth and quick. I even managed to catch a few Z's on the way.  We arrived in Thira about 25 minutes past our scheduled arrival time which was fine because our villa wouldn't be ready until two.  We rushed to the crowd of drivers holding up signs with names of people from all over the world, craning our necks to pick ours out.  Once we found him, we realized that our "Private" transfer wasn't so private and included another family of three. But everyone was going to the same place so no big deal.  Jes and I sat in the front row seats and had a great view of the death defying driving skills our driver had to employ to get from the port at the bottom of the island, to the hotel hosting our villa, at the top of the island.  Still amazes me how nobody's dying from car crashes every ten minutes here.

So we got to Hotel Thira for check-in but we knew we'd have a couple hours to kill before our villa would be ready.  The family that owns the villa, also own the Hotel as well as an ATV rental place attached to the hotel.  They've got you covered.  They let us store our luggage and made some recommendations as to some places to go eat, which we took.  Our lunch today would be at Romantics over looking the Mediterranean.  The waiter was great and his corny attempts at humour were appreciated.  And of course, in the Greek hospitality way we've come to expect, if we wanted something, we'd better flag him down, or else he'd just let us sit there all night.  Even after we requested the bill, he took an additional 10 minutes to bring us dessert and after meal drinks.  Once we were done that, we were at least another 20 minutes before he came with the bill.  I'm actually starting to enjoy this way better than what we're used to at home... Always feeling rushed. Meals here are an experience, and big part of the day, not just a fuel stop.  I appreciate it more and more each time.   And the meal was definitely an experience.  When the waiter suggested we only order one Greek salad to start and share it, and get a different appetizer to share, we quickly obliged and allowed him to surprise us with the second option, which ended up being cheese pie covered in honey.  Now this wasn't the reheated frozen cheese pie we had in Athens.  This was clearly fresh and made wholly in house.    Jes had the pork tenderloin and I had lamb chops for my main.  Needless to say, lunch took pretty much the rest of the two hours we needed to wait, so by the time we got back, our villa was ready.

As soon as we walked in to our villa I knew this was a great choice.  Two storeys with a bedroom and bathroom on each floor. It's as if Jes and I each have our own apartment.  My room upstairs has a living room, bathroom, bedroom, and balcony with an amazing view.  While downstairs, Jes has his room, a bathroom, and the kitchen.  And outside his back door is the terrace and hot tub.  Yes, HOT tub... But not too hot.  You'd be surprised how refreshing it is.  We spent a couple hours just unwinding and then went out to explore Thira.  Thira is central to the island and is small enough to walk around the entire town.  The tourist area is small, but full of restaurants, quaint bars, and shops.  We did some bar hopping and ended up at a bar called Murphy's which seems to be sponsored by Jack Daniel's.  They had the biggest collection of rare and collector's edition bottles I've ever seen outside Lynchburg.  The waiter saw my JD Tattoo and took a picture for his boss who owns the place.  I try to stay away from hard liquor if I don't have the next two days to recover so I did not partake.  However, we ordered a couple local craft IPAs that were at 7.8%, sooooo there's that.  We thought we should probably get some more food in at this time.

We tried to get a table at Kokkalo, which had also been recommended, but someone had reserved the entire restaurant so that was a busy.  We found another place that had a decent view and Jes and I both had different risottos and some fried tomato balls and tzatziki for an app.  This wasn't my favourite meal in this trip but it helped absorb some alcohol. 

We made our way back to our villa, but not before stopping at the "mini market" for some beer and munchies for the room.  And now were just hanging out relaxing and hot tubbing.  Tomorrow we'll check out the museum of Prehistoric Times, cause it's right here and then we plan on grabbing a bus to Oia to hang out for the day and have our final vacation meal before we fly home on Saturday.

Told you this one was short.