Today is the day that we continue our three-day weekend adventure and head to Santorini to see one of the world’s most beautiful sunsets! Sounds simple and relaxing enough right? Well… the day started off a little rough. We had the hotel receptionist call us a free shuttle that was going to pick us up at our hotel and drop us off at the port to catch our ferry. Since our room “only slept six people”, the shuttle driver assumed he was picking up only six people. To his surprise, when he pulled up there were nine of us with all of our luggage waiting to hop into his shuttle. He wasn’t overly thrilled with this idea, but luckily for us he agreed to let us all go anyways. Whew! We got away with that one, but the next hotel not so much…
As we were riding to the port on the shuttle, all of a sudden we heard a huge BOOM! And a small scream, or squeal you could say. Next thing we know, as we look out of the shuttle windows we see a guy flipping off of his moped in the middle of a round-a-bout. His moped flipped over, but thankfully didn’t land on top of him. His flip-flop went flying in the air, and to say the least it was a little bit of an adrenaline rush for all of us. He stood up quickly, checked himself out, and hopped back on his moped.
Once we arrived at the port we learned that our ferry was delayed for about an hour due to high winds and rough waters. This wasn’t the best of news for us considering we were trying to make it to Santorini in time to get a nice view of the sunset. Eventually our ferry came and what we thought was going to be a relaxing day had now turned into a very rushed evening.
Finally, we made it to Santorini! We took a bus to our hotel, which was a room for five people. We thought we could be slick and sneak the rest of us into our room like we did the night before, but this time that didn’t work out so well. We were caught dead in our tracks sneaking four extra people in. 180 euros later we sadly had a second room booked.
Of course traveling isn’t an adventure without some form of miscommunication. At this rate we were ready to do whatever it took to catch a view of the already setting sun. We ordered two taxis to pick us up and were told 7 euros. One car got lucky and understood that 7 euros was the total for the whole ride (which seemed abnormally cheap), while the other car thought that it was 7 euros per person and ended up paying the driver 35 euros which was 4 extra taxi rides too much! To say the least, the second car was a little salty when we met up with the people from the other car and realized what just happened.
Even though it had been a very adventurous and stressful day, the sunset made up for it all. We were able to get a phenomenal view of not only the sunset, but also the bright white buildings that lined the cliffs with crashing waves. A combination of the both made for a breathtaking view that not even our photos, time lapses, or Go Pros could fully capture.
After the sunset we decided to eat at a restaurant that offered the same beautiful view of Santorini. We collectively agreed that our dinner was nothing short of satisfying and a perfect way to see dusk slowly turn into the nighttime.
To end our night we went and checked out all of the shops that lined the stone pathways. Of course we all spent more money than what we planned on souvenirs because hey, we’re in Santorini and that’s awesome! We made it back to our hotel and discovered that the “Wi-Fi” didn’t actually work, so an early night for us it was!
-Riley Mineart
