幾鬼秘的部落格

I’ve been unable to log into my friendster blog for a while so I’ve finally decided to abandon it. My new blog can be found here.

We began our second day in Santorini with a morning stroll through the busy touristy streets of Fira.  I was looking forward more to see Oia, expecting it to be less crowded due to its more remote location on the island.  Well I was half right - it is less crowded, but still pretty touristy.  I probably would’ve enjoyed the town a lot more if it wasn’t so soaking hot.  I did not bring sunglasses with me and my eyes were really hurting from the bright sun.  It didn’t help that all the houses are painted bright white.  But the town was extremely photogenic.  If we hadn’t already made plans for the late afternoon, we would probably have stayed a little longer.

Before we left for the trip, we had booked a sunset cruise in Santorini with our friends CC and Ian who are staying in Santorini for a few days during their European vacation.  The cruise starts at 3pm so we headed back to Fira soon after lunch in Oia.  To go to the old port from Fira we decided to walk down the stairs down the steep hill.  Not only was the walk longer than I expected (1+ hour), it was quite difficult as all the steps slant downwards, which prevented us from speeding up.

After visiting the Nea Kameni volcano as the first stop of the cruise, our boat anchored about 50m from a hot spring.  A number of us decided to jump in and swim for the hot spring.  The water was cold and I hesitated to continue.  In hindsight I probably should’ve turned back seeing that I’m not a particularly good swimmer.  When I reached the hot spring the water was far from hot.  It was luke warm at best.  Soon after I started the swim back my foot cramped up.  Although I didn’t feel like it at the time, I was probably physically spent after the long walk from Fira, the hike to the top of the volcano and finally the 50m swim through cold water.  I yelled out to Chris who stayed on the boat.  She got a staff to throw down a donut and come rescue me.

Chris was of course concerned about how I was doing, but she quickly found out that I was completely fine when our boat sailed to Oia for the sunset.  While most couples sat together to watch the sunset, I spent most of the time taking photos.   Sorry honey :-(  In my defense I did sit with you to watch the sunset, albeit for only a few minutes

Embarrassment of the day: being rescued in front of a whole boat of people.

Our 2-week trip is based largely on Air Transat’s Islands & Legends tour, with half the time spent on Greece’s islands and the other half in the mainland.  But even though we’d already spent 2 days on an island, Crete is really too big to feel like an island.  The only hint of it are the harbours.  Today’s the day we’ve been waiting for - Santorini is the epitome of the Greek islands, especially for honeymooners.  Moreover, we’d decided to splurge on accommodation in Santorini.  So we were excited to see our villa as much as the island itself.

The first things that we saw upon arriving at the new port of Santorini were rental car companies.  People were soliciting for business as we passed by each company.  Although I did prepare myself for driving in Greece (I got an international driving permit one day before leaving), it was more for the second half of our trip in the Peloponnese.  For whatever reason I wasn’t really mentally prepared to drive in Santorini, so I was 50-50 about it.  I guess I was hesitant about driving on narrow hilly streets and concerned about finding parking in such a touristy place.

We casually walked into the first rental company and got a quote of 30 euros per day.  When we got the same quote at the second company, we concluded that the rates must be the same everywhere.  Chris casually asked if we could have a deal at 25 euros, and immediately regretted not asking for a deeper discount when the salesman agreed to it.

We asked for the smallest car available, and drove to a parking lot in Imerovigli, the highest town in Santorini where our villa is located.  Hotels and villas on the island are only accessible by car up to a certain point, since they are all packed against the steep cliff face of Santorini’s caldera.  A poorly-drawn map at the parking lot seemed to indicate every hotel location, except for ours.  We must have spent 15 minutes walking around the same streets before finding a sign for our hotel in a side street.

I was very happy with our room and couldn’t stop taking photos from every corner of it.  Chris was getting annoyed and hungry as it was well past lunch time.  It was after 2:30pm by the time we drove to Perissa to have lunch.  Beaches were only nice-to-have items on our itinerary as they are time consuming to get to by public transportation.  So with a car in hand we decided to make good use of it by visiting the black sand beach at Perissa, followed by the red sand beach after lunch.

We heard that the weather in the days prior to our arrival was iffy, so we were very happy that it was hot and sunny in the afternoon.  But by the time we left the red beach the unsettled weather returned.  It was cloudy, windy and cool.  Our villa supposedly offered an uninterrupted view of the setting sun, and our plan was to watch it from there tonight.  But it was not to be.  Thick clouds had moved in.  By the time we sat down for dinner, it was raining.

On a brighter note, Chris made a fantastic pick for dinner at Saltsa.  We had snails as appetizer, risotto and veal shank as main courses, topped off with a very unique “loukoumi” ice cream.

Oops of the day: on our way to dinner, I attempted to take a short cut but realized that it was too narrow for our car.  While backing up I managed to scrape the driver’s side rear-view mirror against a wall

This morning we headed out to the bus terminal before 7am to catch our bus to Rethymno, which is about 1.5 hours away.  We arrived after 9am and headed up to the Venetian Fortezza, which was rather uninteresting.  After lunch, we walked over to the Venetian Harbour.  We were greeted by a waiter as we “entered” the harbour.  At first I thought we’d gone the wrong way and entered a restaurant by mistake.  But in fact, the harbour was just a strip of restaurants with chairs set right to the edge by the water!  It was quite a sight, but unfortunately, not very pedestrian-friendly at the same time.

We left Rethymno for Hania at around 2pm.  It was another 1.5 hours of bus ride.  We like the harbour at Hania much more as it feels less touristy, with plenty of space for strolling.  We stopped by a creperie at the harbour, with a great view of the lighthouse, to rest.  Unfortunately we didn’t have time to wait for the sunset, since we had to catch our 3-hour bus ride back to Iraklio at 8pm.

After dinner, we went back to the bus terminal for our bus.  Unlike the one in Iraklio, this terminal is basically just a big parking lot, with no sign to indicate which bus is for which destination.  We noticed that all the parked buses belong to the “ANEK” line, while the tickets that we purchased were for the “Minoan” line.  I went to the ticket counter to ask and was rudely told to just wait for the bus where we got off before.  “Where we got off?”  This is where we got off.  In this parking lot, we thought.  We made a frantic round around the parking lot looking for our Minoan bus to no avail.  I returned to a different counter with the same question, and was told to just look for the bus in the parking lot.  We were getting really frustrated as we were fast approaching the 8pm departure time.  I was this close to giving up and buying an ANEK line ticket to Iraklio.  But as we aimlessly looked around, we noticed a single person standing in the middle of the parking lot, seemingly at the very spot where our bus had previously let us out this afternoon.  Was that what they meant by “where we got off”?  I mean, literally where we got off?  We approached the man to ask if that was where the Iraklio bus would be.  “I hope so” was his answer.  He wasn’t sure himself.  Later on we saw him talk to a bus driver who eventually helped him locate the sole Minoan bus that was tucked away in a corner.  What a relief it was as he directed us to the bus.  Minutes later the bus backed out and stopped at the very spot where we got off earlier in the afternoon to wait for passengers.

Chris quickly fell asleep as the bus departed the parking lot.  I tried to sleep but couldn’t as I was being thrown left right and center by the bus.  The driver was racing on the highway!  We arrived soon after 10pm, almost a whole hour ahead of schedule!  Well, as long as we arrive alive, I won’t complain

We arrived at Iraklio at 6am when the sky was still dark.  Looking for street signs that are in Greek was not easy at times but we managed to find our hotel without problems.  Our rooms were not yet ready, as expected, so we left our luggage at the lobby and headed out for breakfast.  The streets by this time was actually already getting busy.  We went to Plateia Venizelou where eateries surround the Morosini Fountain.  We had bougatsa for breakfast - a local specialty that I wasn’t so crazy about.

Our original plan for the day was simply to do some relaxed sightseeing in Hania and Rethymno.  But since we’ve already travelled for 2 days since we last slept on a bed, we decided not to take the 3-hour one-way bus ride to those towns today.  Instead, we took a 20-minute bus to Knossos, the Minoan palace that is supposed to be the highlight of our stay in Iraklio.

We arrived at the site before it opened at 8am.  We had the whole site to ourselves for a good while before the tour groups arrived.  Looking at the crowds coming in, we were glad that we chose to delay our honeymoon until this time.  I can’t imagine what a zoo it’d be had we come in June!

On our way back to Iraklio the bus took a different route so we were passing landmarks that we didn’t see in the morning.  When the bus made a stop at a big busy square I thought we must be close and got off.  We couldn’t find any signs indicating where we were.  I first asked a local where we were on my map.  She didn’t know and pointed to a place on my map, quite randomly I might add.  Doubting her answer I asked another man who proceeded to point to a completely different place on my map.

We gave up and walked in the general direction labelled as “downtown” on a sign.  We weren’t sure where we were going for about 5 minutes before we recognized a hotel that we’d passed by earlier.  We sucessfully arrived at our hotel, retrieved our backpack and headed up to our room.  It was a tiny room and we were somewhat disappointed.  Chris promised me that this would be the worst hotel of our vacation (she was responsible for hotel bookings).

After our first ferry ticket purchase experience, we decided to buy our tickets to Mykonos ASAP.  Next we found a place by Plateia 18 Anglon with a beautiful view of the Sea of Crete where we had lunch.  We went back to our hotel afterward and took a nap.  We planned to wake up at 3pm to go to the Archaeological Museum of Iraklio, where many of the original artifacts found in Knossos are displayed.  But we over-slept and didn’t wake up until 4pm!

After our musuem visit we went by the bus terminal to buy tickets to Hania/Rethymno for tomorrow morning.  We plan to have an early start so we wanted to buy the tickets in case the counter doesn’t open that early.  We spent the rest of the day around the old harbour and headed back to the hotel around 8:30pm after dinner, which was not that early considering our day started at 6am!

Our flight to Paris was rather uneventful.  Our connecting flight to Athens, on the other hand, departed one hour late.  We were supposed to arrive in Athens at 5pm, giving us 4 hours to catch the 9pm ferry to Crete.  That may sound like a lot of time but Athens is notorious for its crazy traffic jams, so we had our fingers crossed.

Contrary to what our online research told us, we were unable to buy our ferry tickets at the airport upon our arrival.  We quickly looked for and caught the bus to the Piraeus port by minutes (no checked baggage paid off!).  This was 6pm.  The ride to the port was uneventful, until 8pm, when the traffic was really stuck.  It turned out that a car had double parked on the street such that our bus could not get by.  While waiting for the tow truck to come, a few fellow Canadians, an Englishman, an Aussie and we decided to walk to the closest metro station (Faliro) and take one stop to the port (Piraeus).

As we were following the Canadians out of the Piraeus metro station, the Englishman told us to follow him instead via a faster route.  He was an old guy and was very late for his ferry, and abruptly decided to take a cab soon after leaving the station.  “Not good”, we thought.  We didn’t know where the ferry ticket counter was but I knew that the way that he pointed us to was not where the ferry was docked.  We took a guess, turned around towards the ferry and ran.  I was very glad to see the ticket counter beyond our ferry.  I left Chris at the ferry and ran to the counter and caught up with those Canucks.  Alas, our adventure had just begun.

Our original plan was to ferry to Hania, spend the day there, and bus to Iraklio in the evening.  Unfortunately, the Hania ferry was fully booked.  But wait, it gets worse.  The ferry to Iraklio only had “deck” class seats, so we’d have to sleep upright for another 9 hours, after just as many on a plane (well, at least that’s what we thought).  I guess it could be worse - the ferry to Iraklio could be full and we would’ve been stuck in Athens.

We boarded the ferry with empty stomachs and grabbed a couple of “pullman” seats.  Chris immediately fell asleep while I went around to take photos.  Soon the ferry left the port.  Chris and I thought that since everyone should have settled in by now, our seats should be safe (deck class seats are not assigned).  We left our seats and had dinner at the on board restaurant.  When we returned we found our seats taken!  Well, not exactly.  Some guy had taken the floor under our seats to sleep.  In fact, the whole ferry was strewn with tired travelers sleeping on the floor.

Ferry from Piraeus to Iraklio

There were actually plenty of seats available in the room, but the room really stunk with all these people sleeping with their shoes off.  We got out of the room and searched for a comfortable place to sleep.  But who are we kidding?  This was an hour into the ferry ride and people were all over the floor.  How could we possibly find a comfortable place to crash?  We ended up picking a place in the reception area.

I woke up about an hour into my sleep and looked at the clock.  This was going to be a long night.

A few hours later Chris and I, along with some guy nearby, were all awaken by a loud snorer.  After some futile attempts to go back to sleep, we packed up and moved to the other end of the open area.  Another few hours later we woke up and noticed that a sofa had become unoccupied.  We quickly grabbed it and spent the last few hours of the ride on it.

Scare of the day: almost getting stranded in Athens

Lowlight of the day: spending 9 hours on a ferry, on the floor

In the past I’ve always planned to depart for my vacations on Friday evenings in order to maximize my time away from home.  I must say that I am glad that we are not doing that for our honeymoon.  Compared to my past trips I feel totally unprepared.  I was swamped at work in the weeks leading to my departure, and I was packing almost to the last minute on this Saturday afternoon.

I was a little surprised that we actually managed to pack everything into my trusty old backpack that’s been with me for 11 years!  Besides that we only have one other backpack that I bought last week for this trip for storing all my camera gears.  It weighs heavier than the big backpack at around 24 pounds.  So, with only these bags, we don’t even have to check any bags or wait for them when we arrive.  How cool is that!