An Unforgetable Scene

We boarded the high speed catamaran in Crete this morning and headed for Santorini. By the way, Bill e-mailed me that I misspelled some words in my blog yesterday. He said I spelled definately wrong 3 times. At least I'm consistent. I guess it needs an i instead of an a. I have always spelled that word wrong I guess. When I asked Ricky how to spell it today he spelled it right and I didn't believe him. I just looked it up and he's right. Oh, well. Please excuse any other misspelled words I have on this blog. I'm on vacation.

We arrived in Santorini at 11:30 this morning (even though this picture was taken after sunset). I sat by a girl on the boat who is from Calgary but is living in Moscow. Her husband is a chemical engineer working for an oil company. They had come to Greece for a weeks vacation. It was interesting to hear about her opinions about living in Russia these days. She's pretty lonely.

I knew Santorini was going to be nice but I hadn't anticipated the magnitude of the experience. For those of you who don't know, Santorini is a Greek Isle that is approxiately 18 miles long. In 1450BC there was a volcano eruption here that left the island in the form it is in now. There are several outer islands, one that still houses an active volcano, water and then the mainland. You can clearly see the crater that was left. The cities are high up on the inner part of the island with volcanic rock forming high high plateaus. The harbor is at the bottom. The ride up in a bus was a breathless experience. From the other harbor where private boats and cruise ships tender their passengers in you have to go up by cable car or donkeys. If you look closely you can see the donkeys in this picture. I felt sorry for them on such a hot day.

Our hotel is on the far outer end of the island on a beach, or just a short alley walk from the beach. The beach was much needed today because the temperature was well over one hundred and it wasn't cool in the shade. The sand is kind of black because of the volcano. Even though the beach looks sandy, as soon as you get to the water's edge it is all rock ledge, not stones like in our previous beaches but smooth long ledges. The water was warmer than in Crete but still very refreshing. I have had it confirmed that Rick doesn't really like swimming in the ocean that much even though he goes in for short periods. I don't think really any of my kids love the ocean like I do. Too bad. Ricky is content to get sun while I paddle away. Anyway, I was a little afraid about our hotel because we paid just $140 for three nites. The pictures had looked good so I was hoping for the best. It turned out very well. The room is basic but clean. There is a nice pool, convenient to the beach, lots of beach restaurants around and free internet and air conditioning. As Bill would say "You can't beat that with a stick." There are also a lot of American guests. In this case it means a lot less smoking going on. Great.

We started exploring a couple of the prominent towns. The views are so breath taking a camera can't begin to do it justice. Shawn would have a field day here with his camera. I've got to figure out how to change the setting on my camera to do sunsets because there was an awesome one tonite.

I think I mentioned before that there seem to be a lot of dogs roaming around in Greece. That certainly is true here too. There were some huge ones around the beach. It was so hot that one of them even got up on a lounge chair under an umbrella and went to sleep. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera at that time. Later I saw one sleeping on a ledge in town. they all seem friendly but Ricky won't let me pat one. I think I will have to anyway when I find the right one.

Ricky is studying the book right now trying to figure out what we're going to do tomorrow. I'm sure it will include awesome scenery. We are here until Sunday when we go back to Athens for a day and a half and then home on Tuesday.