trip day 5

 Trip Day 5:  Athens to Santorini by boat

Have you ever wondered what the Parthenon looks like at 3 am?

Sometimes the runstreak makes you wake up at 3 am to get that run in on a travel day.  I wasn't sleeping well anyway, so getting up wasn't that big of a deal.  I ran all around the Acropolis one last time and saw a lot of people still out from the night before.  It felt very safe with police around and most of the people seemed pleasant.  

This is us at our 5 am hotel check out.  We walked to the bus stop as a group and rode together to Perissa Port at the coast.

The artist Ino had several murals around Athens and we saw this one near the port.

It was early, I had no coffee but there was a sunrise, cool clouds and Violet was in good spirits.

Apparently I didn't get a photo of the giant ferry we were boarding, but this is us leaving the port.

We took a short nap in the comfy seats inside and then decided we needed to be outside looking at the beautiful blue water of the Aegean Sea.

The blue was so blue it hurt.  The white splashes of water created such a gorgeous contrast.

The ferry ride was nonstop views. 

I drew a little and wrote a bit to catch up.  I sketched a few people too.

But you just had to keep looking at the water and the views.

This was a little chapel in one of the stops we made before reaching Santorini.

And this was the first view of Santorini and the cliff we were going to be traveling up by bus. We arrived in port at 3 pm. 

We were picked up by charter bus and we all sort of looked at the zig zag road along the cliffside and tried not to think about where we were headed.

Hope called shotgun.

The rest of us took what we thought could have been our final photograph.

I took a photo from each time my side of the bus was facing the water.  I'll spare you all those, but the little rock wall was about 2 feet tall.  The bus was far more than 2 feet tall.  We drove right along the edge with nothing between us and the rocks and sea below but a bus window.  We would have to stop at the hairpin turns to let other vehicles pass.  We knew the driver did this every single day, multiple times each day, but we still felt justified in freaking out a bit.  Soon we were at the top and then it was a short ride to Perissa Beach.

Perissa Beach is known as the black sand beach.  Our hotel was very close to the ocean, with only a beachfront restaurant between the two.  We dropped our bags and put on swimsuits and we were on the beach moments after arriving.  

This huge mountain juts out into the ocean on one side of the beach.

And the beach goes in the other direction until another mountain bocks it.

We are beach people and this was our place.  We got comfortable, ordered a beach burger and enjoyed the rest of our afternoon.

After some sun and salt air, we tried to walk on the beach to the mountain but quickly saw that the sand was deep and soft and very tough to walk in.  We left the beach, walked to a grocery store for water and snacks and then got the mandatory gelato on the way back.  

This was the view from our hotel door.  On paper the day looked rough with an 8 hour ferry ride.  In reality, it was a much more beautiful day.