Andy's World Tour of Europe 2000 Diary
Saturday May 6, 2000
4:00am is way too early to have to get out of bed and find an airport! Our plane landed on Santorini at 6:30am. Santorini is quite spectacular - we had to wander around for a few hours, taking some pictures and video until we could check into our hotel. We watched the tourists come ashore from the cruise boats down in the Caldera. We spent most of the day exploring around Fira and found a tourist agent that sold day trip tours about the island. Later we watched the sunset from our hotel balcony and then set off looking for a nice restaurant to have dinner.
Sunday May 7, 2000
Another fine day in Santorini...
We spent the day on a bus excursion of the island which started with a guided tour of an archaeological dig at Akrotiri, a recently discovered Minoan town that dates back to 2000BC. With about 30,000 inhabitants, they had 2 and 3-storey houses and underground drainage. The town was destroyed by an eruption of the volcano that is Santorini around 1650BC and preserved under the pumice (volcanic ash). Interestingly, no human remains have yet been found, and all the pottery was stacked under the beds, which seems to indicate that the people had warning of the eruption, packed up, and got off the island before the big bang. The current mystery is what happened to them.
The tour then took us to Faros, at the south cape of Santorini where we viewed the magnificent caldera. Next was a lunch stop at Perissa Exomitis and then to the highest point on Santorini at Prophet Elias Monastery. Then it was onto the Canava Winery to sample some of the locally made wines before returning to Fira. Back at the hotel we watched the sunset again...
Monday May 8, 2000
Today we caught up on our correspondence and sent our postcards to the folks back home and checked our email. Then we headed for the Olympic Airways office to arrange for our flight to Mykonos, which our agent back home had buggered up. We walked down to the old port at the base of Fira. There were lots of cruise-ship tourists coming ashore and going up on the donkeys. The donkeys seemed to smell so I wasn’t that keen to ride on one. We had lunch down there before heading back up on the cable-car, where we met some other Aussies. In the afternoon we took a bus to Oia at the northern tip of the island. Here I saw the villa used in the film Summer Lovers. The bus back to Fira was a standup affair ... a bit ‘pigs and chickens’ as Tony called it. Tonight we had dinner at the restaurant just below the hotel. Tony had ‘The Special’ which was fish, thinking ‘special’ meant cheap. It must have been the most expensive thing they had on the menu.
Tuesday May 9, 2000
Today we hopped on a bus to Perissa Beach. Walked along the road next to the black sand/pebble beach. The beach itself is scorching hot. We walked back along the beach in the water... a bit cooler. The bus back to Fira had broken down. Tony talked with a German girl while we waited for the next bus. Pizza for Tea. Watched the sunset again - how could we miss it! In the evening we walked around Fira window shopping (and perving!)
Wednesday May 10, 2000
This morning we visited the Archaeological Museum in Fira. In the afternoon we flew to Mykonos. We were picked up by the Hotel mini bus and taken to the resort/hotel at Platis Yialos. Very nice spacious hotel and lovely people. We had a walk along the beach and had dinner at a beachside restaurant. There’s lots of them lining the beach. The Greek Salad is very yummy.