Monday morning was time for a whole new adventure. George, the other owner of the hostel, and quite possibly the nicest person I've ever met, drove us up to Fira so we could take the boat over to the volcano and the hot spring. We opted to take the stairs down to the port and the cable car back up. It worked out really well. It was about a 30 minute walk down so I was super happy to not have to walk back up all of those stairs.
Anyway, this is the boat. I thought it was pretty cute.
We took a short ride over to the volcano and then had an hour and a half to explore. It was just the right amount of time to walk around the entire thing.
There's the boat chillin next to the volcano. Pretty casual.
There's the path. It was clear that the stones on the path had been brought over on purpose, but everything else actually belonged. Monique and I spent a lot of time talking about the differences between this volcano and Mt. Vesuvius, which we had visited only a few weeks before. While the view from the top of Vesuvius was super super cool, the actual volcano itself was better here. There were so many interesting land formations and different kinds of plant life to explore.
The view was also pretty amazing...even it if it wasn't as high as Vesuvius.
After the volcano, we took the boat over to the hot springs. The boat stopped and said that we had 20 minutes to swim. If we wanted to go to the hot spring, we had to jump in and swim across the cold water first. We figured it would be an adventure, so we did. The water was quite cold, but honestly not as bad as I thought it would be. What was unexpected though, is that the hot spring wasn't actually very hot. It was decidedly luke warm, but since it isn't isolated from the rest of the Aegean Sea, it couldn't actually be that hot. It was ok though, we were all proud of ourselves for the adventure, and we lived to tell the tale so it was all good.
When we got back to the island of Santorini, we took the cable car up to the top, and Christine and I decided to stop for waffles on the way back. This picture I do have to show to you. I can't help it. Sorry.
The waffle was great but I was freezing and walking back to the hostel was a bit of a struggle. We got laughs from a lot of the locals who pointed out to us that it wasn't very warm. We felt like silly tourists, but I guess that happens to me a lot here. I'm pretty convinced they only tell us that the hot springs are hot so that they get some entertainment out of the tourists who believe them. It's ok though, I understand. I think I would do the same thing if I lived on Santorini.
After one of the most satisfying hot showers ever, we took a bus up to the town of Oia, on the northern most point of Santorini. They're quite famous for their sunsets there and we thought it would be fun to explore the town a little bit.
We found the most adorable bookstore ever.
There were books in all sorts of different languages inside. This one just happens to be in Greek.
Also, there were tons of quotes painted all over the inside. I was a fan.
Oh, and it just happened to be someone's home. We learned that this British couple had come to Santorini twelve years ago, didn't find a bookstore, and decided to open one. Lots of things have happened in the past twelve years for this couple, but it resulted in people running an adorable bookstore out of their tiny home with some cats who just hang out.
So back to nature pictures. They're just so pretty.
There's the sun beginning to set. I'm pretty proud of this picture. I'm relying on my phone for all of my photography this trip so I'm always excited when I get pictures like this that are super artsy.
So later that evening I was snapchatting with my brother a bit. This was his reaction when I told him I was in Greece. Sorry Avi, I couldn't resist.
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For our last day on Santorini, we decided to go back to the red beach. It had definitely been one of the highlights and we thought it would be fun to go back. I was so glad that we did because it was a completely different experience the second day. Tuesday was pretty windy, which meant that there were a ton of waves. The beach looked completely different, and the waves were gorgeous.
After sitting and being mesmerized by the waves for a little while, Christine and I decided to climb up the cliff to see what we would find. Don't worry, it wasn't actually dangerous. The climb wasn't steep, we just wanted a cool view.
And we found a little cave!
This was the last picture I took on the island of Santorini. It's a view from the top of our little perch. It's kind of hard to tell how far we were, but the beach down below is where we had come from. I think we did pretty well :)
So that's Greece in a nutshell. The next part of my adventure is one more night in Athens and then a few days in Israel. Stay tuned!
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