AUGUST 7th

had booked a tour to go and check out the active volcano in the centre of Santorini. caught a ship out to the central "island" and were led by our guide around the various craters. no sign of lava or billowing smoke unfortunately, but there was a steam vent and some areas that'd turned yellow from the sulphur. you could really feel the heat coming outta the vent!
cos the volcano is very closely monitored, the guide said the residents of Santorini don't fear and eruption, it's the earthquakes that are the killers - literally. Santorini is beautiful, but it's not the most "permanent" of islands!

next stop was off to the hot springs.
the boat couldn't get close enough due to being too shallow, so anyone who wanted to paddle in the springs had to swim there. the volcanic vents warm the water to about 36 degrees and due to the minerals, change the colour of the water too! only a small area that's closest to the vents is a vivid green and then it's an orange-brown colour till quite far out.
swimming towards the vents, you don't notice the temperature difference too much, it's more when you are swimming back to the boat that you feel the cold!

next moved on to the other island that makes up Santorini for lunch. yiros (of course) and a greek salad.
grabbed the boat back to Oia where some people alighted but as we'd just been there a couple of days before, we were happy to just head back to the main port. took the cable car up to the town cos the donkeys were a touch too stinky!

if you happen to be in the area, here's the perfect coffee and cake break in Fira, Santorini!

grab cakes from Zotos Family Pastry.
grab take away coffee from Quinta.
sit on porch of Replay (clothing store).
ENJOY!

the cakes at Zotos looked soooo good, but they didn't sell coffee and the next door wouldn't allow us to have their coffee with Zotos cakes in the store, so we had to search for a take away coffee joint. after we'd had our cake, we returned to Quinta for another coffee cos it was a funky joint. think it becomes a bar at night. i tried a "greek coffee" for the first time and regretted it! don't know if it was just bad there (i doubt it though), but it tasted crap (really weak too) and is full of sediment (purposefully i think). will have to check with "she who pays my wages" if that's the way it's meant to be!

headed home and swam in the pool for a couple of hours until it was dark then headed our for dinner. expressed that i didn't want yiros again, so we wandered around the beach road a bit looking at various places and settled on one that had good descriptions in english of the food! :-)
had squid, a greek salad and moussaka which was a first and fantastic!

AUGUST 8th

had a truly relaxing and very very lazy day. did nothing but swim and sit by the side of the pool.
the reception desk is adjoined with a little kitchen and so when we got hungry, we just ordered some food, had a beer, chilled for a bit more and jumped in the pool again!

aaah that was the life...

no looking around museums or churches.
no rushing to catch the next train.
just the sun and the water...

AUGUST 9th

had to check out in the morning but because they understand a lot of the ferries don't leave till the afternoon and there's an outdoor toilet and shower everyone's free to use the pool until they leave!so we first went out and booked our accommodation in switzerland on the net then came back and swam and frolicked till about 7pm.

Jee suggested yiros for dinner again (we'd had one for lunch!), but i didn't think i could stomach another plus cos it was our last night in Santorini i felt like something special.
found a restaurant where you walk out the back and select what you want then they cook it up for you.
so we chose a skewer of meat and veg each, a greek salad and a stuffed tomato and capsicum. the stuffed vegies and salad came out quite soon with bread and we were fairly full after all that.
took a while for the skewers and we were wondering if we could cancel them cos we'd really had enough. but they came eventually and you'd never guess what accompanied them on the plate...

pita bread, vegies and sauce to make your own yiros!!

NOOOOOOOOO!

and it was chunkier than your average yiros!
but we soldiered on!
can't waste good food - even if it was the same thing you'd eaten for the last five days!

by the end of it all, we were super stuffed.
but we were lucky that night. towards the end of our meal, the moon started to rise and it was bloated and blood red. very beautiful for our final night.

we rushed home cos we thought the guy was leaving to take us to the port between 9 and 930pm. when we got there, he was sitting by the pool with a cigarette looking very relaxed. we apologised for being late but he told up not to worry cos the ferry wasn't till 11pm and it's always late anyway.
so we relaxed for a bit and took some night shots of the pool area.
at about 10 we started wondering when we were leaving. i think by 1030 Stelio could see we were a touch agitated about possibly missing our ferry so we hit the road.
unfortunately, he was right... very right.
it was late... an hour late.
the ferry was meant to be boarded at 11pm arriving in Piraeus at 4am.
but we boarded at midnight and didn't get in till 7am!