The bright side of disaster: Santorini, Greece

So sorry for not posting yet... I just now got wireless for the first time!

Well, Greece is absolutely amazing. The pictures don’t even come close to doing it justice! McKinley’s mom sent her with a book by the same title as this post… it ended up describing our first day and a half in Greece just about perfectly. Traveling over there was better than expected. Especially until we got to the Santorini airport on Wednesday, Aug 20 and found out that our bags were still in Athens and my claim ticket was in the hands of the woman who took my boarding pass in the Philly airport (minor disaster #1). So we spent the morning of the first day in Santorini (Thursday) riding the bus in the clothes we had lived in for about 48 hours back and forth to the airport, but FINALLY GOT OUR LUGGAGE!! On the bright side of disaster, we got to become best friends with the man who drives the bus from Oia to Fira before the first day was even over!

After getting back to the hostel, putting on clean clothes, and putting on deodorant for the first time in 2 days, we decided to go down to the port below Oia, the village we were staying in, and go swimming because we knew there were rocks to jump off of (from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, obviously). And now the adventure really begins… so, we spent a considerable amount of time picking out the perfect spot to spend our afternoon, away from topless women, and where we had a beautiful view of the harbor and were close to this awesome island we could swim to. And let me tell you, this spot was PERFECT. So, we dropped off our stuff and jumped in, and as I jumped in, I felt my foot scrape against a rock… it kind of hurt, but I thought I just scraped it. Then it started to really hurt, so I looked at it, and guess what? There were about 50 little black spikes sticking out of my foot. Why? Oh, because I stepped on a sea urchin. Yes, a sea urchin. In fact, Meredith and I both had stepped on sea urchins as we jumped into the crystal clear Aegean Sea (only later did we learn that Ellen had also had a very similar experience at a completely separate harbor… apparently this is common? Or are we just prone to disaster…). It seems that the growth covering the rocks was not moss but in fact those devilish little animals. But were there any signs posted or warnings in a single one of the twelve thousand travel books we read about these dear little creatures? Of course not. That would be far too logical. And if you have ever stepped on a sea urchin, you will know that the pain is quite intense, and only grows with time. But don’t worry… only a little over half of sea urchins are venomous.

But hey, on the bright side of disaster, as I treaded water with one foot and McKinley picked spikes out of the other, some nice Greek boys with a boat came up and rescued us, and we made it back to our hostel where the owner proceeded to attempt to suck a few spikes out with a contraption called “The Extractor”, which filled with blood but extracted no spikes. He then told us that the others would just have to stay in there, and that in a few days we would harden to the pain. We did not think that was satisfactory, seeing as our feet were still throbbing with intense pain and walking was quite a challenge. So, we spent the rest of the afternoon soaking our feet in olive oil (apparently that loosens them? I am not convinced.), and we let the three healthy group members pick the spikes out of our feet. And that was day 1.

The rest of the trip was not quite as eventful, but equally as fabulous. On Friday we ended up moving from our youth hostel in Oia to a villa that Ellen found for us just outside the main town of Fira. The hostel was really quaint and in a fabulous location, and the owner was great seeing as he spent 30 minutes picking sea urchin spikes out of my foot, but there was no air conditioning and it was kind of smelly. That afternoon we basically sat around the pool tending to our urchin feet (I went and explored Fira for a while), and then Ellen insisted upon making us delicious pasta for dinner that night… clearly she had to force it down our throats.

Saturday, we decided to go tour a winery… sadly we missed the last tour in English. But we did get an adventure out of it, because we hitch-hiked back to the bus station… and by “we” I mean all 6 of us. Did I mention that there were 7 people in that smart car? It was quite a feat. That afternoon we all split up and explored Fira a bit more. Ellen and I decided we wanted to fit in with the cruise ship crowds, so we took a cable car down to the port in Fira, walked around a bit, then took a donkey back up. After the donkey man offered Ellen his hand in marriage, he put us on some donkeys and sent us on our way. It was pretty fun... but we definitely smelled like donkey the rest of the day.

Sunday we went to the black sand beach at the south end of the island. We were interested/nervous to see what the hot sand would do to our urchin feet, but surprisingly it worked a few of the spikes out! Way to go, volcanic sand!

This morning (Monday) we caught an early flight to Athens, where we will be for the night. We did the Acropolis thing this afternoon, and that’s pretty much all there is to Athens. But we are in a great little part of town (with a STARBUCKS!!) so we've just been walking around/enjoying the internet the rest of the day.

Other than the fact that I may have begun to pick up the Euro-smell (cigarette smoke, un-deodorized bodies, and dirty streets), from what I can tell, I really like Europe. But it perplexes me to think that they have missed the boat on a few things. If someone could tell me how Crocs made it here, but not deodorant or Ziploc bags, I would be grateful. On the bright side, they DO have Special K with Red Berries, and Ellen has informed me that in Italy the clothing brand of choice for those inclined toward the “punk” style is none other than… Carhartts. Italy here I come!!

P.S. I put pictures up, so if you click the link at the side, you can see them. I think it's easier to view them, and they load faster, if you click "view slideshow". Enjoy!