Son of a Beach!

So on Thursday we got another late start, and when trying to decide which beaches we were going to hit, we realized we needed to rent a car, which ended up having us not leave the hotel until almost 2PM.

However for all of you who were waiting for it...we got a SMART car! (convertible even). It truly is as tiny as everyone says it is. Adrienne made me pose for pictures with it because she figured everyone at home (mostly her family) would laugh when seeing them.




We then decided to drive to Perivolos, which is the black sand beach here. At least this time I didn't throw a temper tantrum and refuse to go on the sand because it wasn't a real beach (which is what happened when at 3 years old my mother took me to the black sand beach in Hawaii).

Like most everything else the beach was pretty much empty and all of the various cafes, restaurants, life guard stations, etc were closed. However we did find one little section where they had left up the palm umbrellas and chairs. So we grabbed 2 chairs and Adrienne proceeded to quickly start napping while sunning herself. I on the other hand walked around the beach getting pictures, and then settled in with "The Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama (which so far is an amazingly engrossing view into his political/moral philosophy of government).





It started getting a little cold as the wind picked up and the sun started to set, so we set out in search of dinner. I had read really good things about a restaurant called Lava and Yulie (the owner of the hotel we're staying at) also highly recommended it. Unfortunately we were having problems trying to find it since a large chunk of the beach road was shut down for construction, and of course there were no detour signs. Eventually we found our way around the construction (after the 3rd or 4th try) only to find Lava closed. There were only 2 restaurants open. We checked with the first one and like everywhere else they didn't have their full menu. However the place next door, Aquarius, said they had their full menu, which even included soups! Apparently even though avgolemono soup (or Agamemnon soup as I like to call it to drive A nutes) is Greek, soups in general aren't popular in Greece as this is the first restaurant we had seen offering them. Needless to say we were psyched. What made it even better is that the food was AMAZING! By far the best food we've had in Santorini. We're excited because they deliver to Fira too, so we figure we'll have dinner on the balcony some night.

We then drove back to our hotel and watched Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.

On Friday we got up early to go to Red Beach which is supposed to have red sand and be beautiful. We had to make sure to get the car back by 1PM or be charged for an extra day. We drove along the highway and found our way to Red Beach. However once there we discovered that you basically have to edge along a cliff and climb over some rocks to get to the beach. Once we made our way there we found the beach to be like many of the cape beaches where it's mostly stone vs sand. In addition all of the beach chairs that had been left behind were broken.

Church right outside of red beach

Trying to skip stones in the ocean

It was a chillier day than Thursday and so A decided we shouldn't hang out on the beach but rather go exploring in the Smart car and find the lighthouse out on the edge of the island. We found it, but unlike the one in Argostolion it's more functional than picturesque, and it's a Hellenic Navy outpost so it was locked up too.

We then drove back to the hotel and handed in the keys to the car. We grabbed some crepes for lunch, which were interesting. The Greek islands are apparently where the majority of France vacations in the summer, so there are little touches (like croissants & crepes) everywhere. We then went shopping for gifts, and of course while shopping I couldn't resist spoiling Adrienne with some stuff from Santorini too.

When we got back to our hotel we discovered the people in the room next to us were from Miami and the people across from us were from Ashland! After 10 days in Greece it was nice to be able to have long discussions with people who had distinctly American accents and shared our culture. We ended up all going to dinner at Archipelagos together.

On Saturday we're touring and actually getting to walk on the volcano!