Trip Day 8: Last day in Santorini
We woke up knowing this was going to be a weird day. This was a free day, our last day in Greece, and we were scheduled to fly out of Santorini at 12:50am the next day. This meant checking out of our hotel rooms by 11 am and storing our luggage in the hotel. Then we'd have the whole day to "rest". Many of our group planned to lounge on the beach and nap by the pool. Those were probably good ideas. I slept well the night before and woke up at 7 am to go run. This was the view outside our door as I walked out.
The newly named "Tomato Gang" was packed up and moved out early. We knew a rest day would be smart, but we had other ideas that we needed to investigate. First, we walked to a coffee place nearby called "Chocolat". It was a cute beachfront place with pink and aqua decor.
The coffee here was good. I love a good unsweetened cappuccino on Europe. The presentation of it in the little cup and saucer with the little spoon is just the best. It really makes the whole coffee experience better. We also had "trying affogato" on our list for this trip. Since it was served here, it was the perfect time to try it. The premise is fine and it's essentially a cappuccino or latte in terms of ingredients, but by the time the ice cream sits a minute, you kinda just have an iced coffee. I HATE iced coffee. But we tried it. With our phones charged and our bodies caffeinated, we embarked on a little walk through town.
We found this terrifying scarecrow on our walk. On a bit of a whim, we were following Alayna's map to a place off the beach to see about renting some sort of transportation for the day. We had dreamed about renting 4 wheelers, which they called quads but knew we may have to settle for little mopeds or scooters because of cost.
Turns out, when you don't do your research and you just talk to nice people, you find out you can afford quads! The rental guy was overjoyed to rent 3 quads to us. The process was really easy and laid back. Just like everything else we experienced in Greece, they seemed to be doing just fine without a bunch of legal nonsense that ruins everything here in America. He asked if we had a driver's license and he looked at those to write down our names. That was pretty much all the into he gathered. He asked if we had driven a quad before and when it was obvious that Kennedy had not, he just waved his hand and said it would be ok. (I found the same sort of nonchalant attitudes towards most common sense things in Greece. There were no guardrails to protect the stupid. There were not handrails to keep people from falling to their death. If you did something stupid and got hurt or died, that was fine with Greece. I liked it.)
I'll be completely honest. One of the reasons I wanted to rent quads for the day was because we passed a giant Spongebob statue at a daycare on the main road when we arrived and when we rode the bus to Fira. I wanted my photo taken with Spongebob. The Tomato Gang was totally down for the experience and for the photo as well. After we filled up our empty gas tanks on a busy road, we drove further and rolled up in the parking lot of a random Greek daycare center.
I got my photo! I knew Blue would appreciate my effort. So now it was around 11 am and we had several hours of quad rental ahead of us and absolutely no plans after Spongebob. There was a road map of the island on the back of the rental agreement folded up in my pocket, but you can't really look at a map while dodging cars, mopeds and busses at 40+ MPH. I asked if anyone wanted to go anywhere in particular. They said no. Then I remembered we had also seen these awesome, old windmills on top of a mountain as we bussed in. I told them to follow me and off we rode.
It's true there are not a ton of roads on the island. I mean, it's not Manhattan or anything, but still, navigating wasn't easy. Some roads were simply not roads at all. But dumb luck was smiling on us and without a single U-turn, we drove up a steep road to the top of the mountain and found the windmills.
This is what it was like taking photos with this group. Violet and I took a selfie with the windmill...
And Kennedy never missed an opportunity to photobomb us.
The views were much more serious up there. The mountain sort of dead ended and you could see forever in all directions. It was amazing.
We kept having these moments of riding to a spot and then looking back and realizing how far or how high we had traveled. This was a breathtaking moment.
On one of our taxi rides through town, we saw a mom taking one of those beautiful Insta-photos. Her husband was taking the photo as she stood inside an arch overlooking a gorgeous water view. Just as we passed by, the ever present wind blew her dress up, showing her lower cheeks to the world and to the camera. We all laughed and shouted "cheeks out!" Violet jokingly had to recreate the moment on the mountaintop, thankfully with less wind. "Cheeks out" became a new goofy call and response on the trip.
One of the few people who used to read this blog was my aunt LJ and she was an ER nurse her whole career. This made her very cautious and caused her to be the voice of safety and reason in our family. If she's reading blogs in Heaven, she'll be happy to see that we were wearing helmets. Of course, she would have peed her pants knowing we were riding these quads around a bunch of crazy drivers in Greece, but still, helmets.
We drove all over this half of the island exploring. We found a parking area and stopped for lunch. We saw another "scarecrow". What is it with the freaky babies? Very strange. This one was in front of an ice cream cooler at a souvenir shop. We got lunch at a beach front place and found a place to buy postcards for Kennedy and Alayna. Then we were back on our wandering quad adventure.
We found a road that led us all the way to the edge of the mountain that stuck out into the ocean. We followed it and found some people rock climbing. We paused long enough to consider asking them if we could join, but we all had visions of bloody knees and concussions so we decided to keep driving. (I was already very mindful of safety because Violet was on the back of my quad. I was being really careful and mostly obeying the island speed limit. I knew the beating I would get if we got hurt.)
So I watched for other drivers, stayed far away from crazy people, but we still needed to have some fun. While driving around some unfamiliar roads, we saw a sign that read "Ancient Thera". It was brown, like the state park signs here, so I turned and followed the road. The road became more narrow and then turned to gravel. Then there was another sign. We turned again and the gravel road became a trail and the gravel became larger rocks. The trail was very steep. I started to realize we were climbing a part of that mountain that stuck out into the ocean. From the beach and the hotel, you could see tiny caves about halfway up the mountain. We were climbing that mountain to those caves. Violet and I led the way and we got stuck at a very steep spot on some big rocks. I kept maneuvering until we got free and continued our climb up to a more level spot. We stopped there to make sure the others could make it safely. When Kennedy tried, she got stuck in the same place. Thats her way down there.
That was high enough for Alayna and Kennedy had no choice but to stop and park her quad right there. She walked up to us and we continued our climb on foot.
When you don't do the research, you don't have to worry about snakes. Who even knows if Greece has snakes? We watched our step and soon we were at/in the caves. It was really cool. These prehistoric caves were part of the lives of the very first people who came here and we were standing there with them. Another experience that would have been completely ruined by idiots in America.
Then we were back on the roads with a few minutes left to explore. We don't know what this old building was, but we saw it from a distance and eventually wound our way around to see it up close. Things can be cool even when you don't know what they are.
We found our way back to the rental place, which, honestly, was a major victory without a map, and we turned the quads in still in good condition. The poor guy had no idea we climbed a mountain with them. Then we walked back towards the hotel. That sun that was slowly cooking us all week, it was really baking us on the quads. We applied and reapplied but we were still toasty. Kennedy joined a nunnery on our walk back. I think this was when she got street corn too.
We walked back to the hotel and recharged our phones by the pool while we took short naps in the pool chairs. We had been told by a random guy on the plane that we needed to try mistika and ouzu, two Greek liquors. One of the restaurants brought us free mistika in Athens. It's made from pine resin and tastes like terrible pine resin. Ouzu was on our list, so we picked up a tiny souvenir bottle on our walk back and tried it by the pool. Somehow it was even worse. Check and check.
At this point the sun was setting and people were getting restless. We still had a bus ride to the airport and a bit of time in the airport before we were set to depart at 12:50 am. As the sun set and our bodies felt the full day in the sun, we started to wonder if our epic day of quad exploring was worth skipping out on rest. We only wondered for a second. It was totally worth it. We could sleep on the plane anyway, right? And I think we were going to be on a bus after that. We'd be fine. This was fine.
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