Santorini Sunsets

After an abysmal 16 hour overnight ferry ride, stopping at almost every island on the way, Jesse (my buddy from Canada) and I made it to lovely Santorini.

As I think the theme will be for the duration of the trip, it was quite an adventure the whole way getting there. Initially Jesse and I planned to catch the 8A.M. ferry out of Piraeus to Santorini. Neither of us had a working cell phone. And we were staying in different hostels. We agreed to meet in the Metro station at Omonia Square, and head down together. I barely made it there at 7A.M. - the agreed meeting time.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

At 7:35, I knew I couldn't catch the ferry myself at this point, and decided to just go back to my hostel, and check back in and go back to bed. Luck would have it that in the half hour I was gone, my bed was rented out to someone else so I had to sit around and stay awake hoping someone would check out.

Around noon time, I heard from Jesse via email and we met up in downtown Athens. We discussed things, and he apologized for sleeping through his alarm - we had been out drinking the night before until 3A.M. or so, so I was accepting of this oversight. He had felt so bad though that he woke up and did some research, and found us another ferry leaving in the afternoon, and had accommodation information as well! Kudos to him!

We went to get tickets from the travel agency nearby. The dodgy travel agent tried scamming us 10 extra euro on each ticket, talking quickly, speaking of taxes and surcharges - after previously quoting us a lower price which we agreed upon. I spoke up and straightened him out. He seemed rather embarrassed that he had been caught trying to scam us and was most apologetic about the "honest mistake."

We left and tried to get a taxi to the port, to make it on time for our ferry. Knowing what a taxi should cost is a great idea I was informed, before going to Europe. The first taxi we hailed said it cost 40 euro for a trip to the port. The second taxi we hailed shook his head and drove away. The third taxi we hailed said 12 euro. We gladly accepted this proposal and even got a few lessons in crude and lewd Greek words on the way.

The ferry was half empty, despite our lovely travel agent telling us there were only airline seats available at 27 euro, not deck seats at 15 euro - though we found this was much to the contrary. 16 uncomfortable hours later though, we were in paradise. And it was all well worth it.