Santorini

Arriving in Santorini is a spectacular experience. I'm not sure if it was because we came in on an enormous ferry at 12:30 am and the looming cliffs were visible as we pulled in, or the screaming sirens of the ferry announcing out arrival made it so intense. It was an exciting moment and I was happy to be back in this magical place. I had come when I was abroad on my cruise through the Greek Islands. At that time, not only did I not appreciate things like I do now, we also only got a glimpse at each island as we stopped. The only thing I really remembered from Santorini was the amazing view and riding the donkeys up the side of the cliff to reach Fira. Once we disembarked from the ship, we found our hotel driver immediately. After about a 20 min, at the most, drive from the port to our hotel in Imerovgli, we were happy to find out from Yannis that WE had the honeymoon suite. He was actually very apologetic because he was worried we would not want the cozy bed...but we definitely didn't mind once we saw the size and view of the rest of the room. We went to bed that night anticipating what it would be like to wake up to our spectacular view in the morning. It was refreshing to literally sit up bed and see blue blue water for miles. The only way I could really describe it, is that you feel like you are literally on top of the world. That morning we had a great breakfast, in the cave of the hotel, and Ashley was especially excited they had homemade spinach pie! We spent the day relaxing by our pretty much private pool enjoying the view and laughing out loud at our favorite Chelsea Handler book. That night we went into Fira for dinner after enjoying a bottle of some of the best wine I have ever had. I had the great idea to haul a bottle that I bought at the Alois Legeder winery. It did weigh down the suitcase, but once we had a spectacular balcony to enjoy it on, I was very happy to have it. Since we had the wine before walking to Fira, the views of our first Santorini sunset were even more spectacular. Once we reached the capital city, we spotted our restaurant...appropriately named Nikos. It looked packed and we didn't want to look like tourists eating at 10pm, so we decided to have a Mythos, our favorite Greek beer at a rooftop bar before heading to dinner. We arrived about 11pm and ate some of the best Greek food around. We ordered a lot of things that I had to keep asking Ashley the name of many times. Stuffed bell peppers and tomatos and something that resembled lasagne (I thought at least) and stuffed grape leaves, and tzatziki of course. This was one of the few nights we did have dessert, mainly because we had to celebrate Ashley's birthday that was June 3rd. I brought some special candles all the way from Swiss land and snuck them over to the waiter, Nikos (yes, THE Nikos) when she wasn't looking. After dinner we checked out one club, but we were way too early since the big crowds didn't arrive until about 2am. We decided we should at least go grab a drink at a bar, but when we walked in one that had unfortunately been taken over by tourists and we felt like we could have been in Texas we decided to enjoy the walk back and call it a night. As we were wandering along the path that doesn't always look like a path, we took one wrong turn and worried this was going to be our second major wrong turn on a Greek Island. We had already gotten lost and Kos and didn't want to be wandering around random little neighborhoods all night. We found our way back and remembered where we were by the cute waiter in a restaurant that we had passed on our way there. Almost back in Imerovgli, we met a few American guys that were exactly the opposite of what we wanted to hang out with at this point. They were set on getting to a few clubs and wondered if we knew which were the best. Nope, we were saving our crazy night for Mykonos! After another relaxing day the following day, we headed into town to find a Hazatkinis bottle of wine and hopefully a bakery. Ashley was still on the hunt for the best spinach pie in Greece and I was right there with her. We managed to find a little store and the perfect bakery. We enjoyed our goodies on the balcony, while bathing the European way and painting each other's nails...luckily our balcony only overlooked the ocean...I mean it was the honeymoon suite. That night we were planning on taking the bus to Oia for dinner at 1800, a slow food restaurant and one of the best on the island. We told the nice lady, Stella at the hotel, we were taking the bus after she had made the reservation for us and she was worried that the bus wasn't running. She said if it wasn't she would send a taxi. After waiting at the bus stop for about 5 min, one of the guys from the hotel pulled up and said Stella send me in his best English. We were very grateful and it was fun to learn he spoke Italian. I chatted with him in my best Italian during the 15 min drive to Oia and Ashley pretended to be impressed! At 1800, we had the most spectacular dinner, probably the best the whole trip. I had this amazing salad with peaches and prosciutto and Ashley had eggplant soup to start. We each ordered the same entree, because it just sounded incredibly delicious, a seabass with asparagus. For dessert we shared the tastiest lemon tart, melt in your mouth lemon tart. After strolling around, we took a very interesting cab ride back. We both agreed that he wasn't more than 18 and he had this weird habit and sucking between his teeth, kind of like he was eating sunflower seeds and they were getting stuck. Really strange, but we kept looking at each other, thinking "what the heck is going on up there." One thing that was for sure in Santorini was the wind. The sky was crystal blue, but when the wind kicked up it was fierce. When we arrived back at the hotel that night, it was blowing strong. We had to be very careful wearing little sundresses! Going to bed that night, we were sad to be leaving Santorini, but excited for our next island...Mykonos.