Santorini day 1 (09/06/2009)

On our first full day in Santorini, we headed to the other side of the island to Kamari Beach. Not having scooters this time, we relied on the public buses in Santorini, which are actually really nice "coach"-type buses, but cheap and (mostly) reliable.

The "sand" at Kamari is actually black lava rock, and good god is it hot. There are little boardwalks made out of plywood all over the beach so you can avoid walking on the pebbles as much as possible, but to actually get to the areas of beach chairs and umbrellas you have to go onto the pebbles. I tried to emulate the meditative state of someone walking on hot coals, but mostly I wanted to take my feet off and throw them in the ocean. We were really glad to have water shoes to put on (recommended to us by Gigi) because the pebbles go right into your flip flops.


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After an afternoon at the beach, we took the bus back to Fira (the main town on the island) and, not wanting to make the uphill walk to our hotel in Firostefani (smaller village north of Fira), we decided to change buses and get on one that would drop us off in Firostefani. But alas, we missed the stop because the bus driver didn't announce it, so we ended up riding further than we wanted, up to the next town, Imerovigli. It wouldn't have been so bad, since we only needed to walk downhill to our hotel at that point, but we were in a hurry to get showered and back to Fira in time to catch the sunset at Franco's, a great cliffside bar with lounge chairs. So, we were a little rushed, but we did make it to Franco's in time. After the sunset we had a tasty meal at a cliffside restaurant with a great nighttime view of the funicular that runs up and down the mountainside from Fira to the port. We finished up the night with delicious fig ice cream.



Click here for more photos from Santorini, day 1!