Greece day 4
We woke up and went to breakfast. It was very windy outside so we had to sit in the indoor restaurant. We made sure to be up nice and early to get the most out of our day. At around 9 AM we got onto our ATV and left to go to Oia. Oia is one of the most idyllic towns on Santorini. It has many pretty towers and wind mills. It is also one of the most expensive cities on the island because that is where all the millionaires go on the island to play and have a good time.
Lesson 1: do not try getting a hotel in Oia if you do not want to spend a lot of money.
Oia was a charming city, I actually think it was my favorite city of the whole island of Santorini. It looks as pretty in real life as it does on the postcards. You can see a ton of white buildings and there are so many different shops to browse through, in addition to a church, old castle ruins, and the Mediterranean sea that can be seen all around you!
Several Tips:
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Make sure you pick up your head whenever you turn a corner, otherwise you might miss a concession of donkeys coming right at you, being led through the city.
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Also be sure to look in every nook-and-cranny because there are cats everywhere! I thought that was one of the coolest things!!
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Make sure if you rent an ATV you know how to drive and park it, otherwise you might get yourself parked into a spot and unable to get out. Checkout the video to see my little parking incident.
There are also beaches and a pier in Oia, but we weren’t able to stop there this time. Hopefully, I can get back there someday still. We stopped and rested in the shade and ate some ice cream. I ended up buying a ring, because I originally had been collecting rings from each place I travel to. It cost €150 (originally €280, but I talked the lady down). It was a regular store, a 14k gold ring, and it was a lot of money, but I fell in love with the ring. I still don’t feel right by having purchased it, because it does not support sustainable travel- it is a bad habit to get into if I want to go to more places. I learned my second lesson for the day:
Lesson 2: spend travel money on experiences, not things. I will still collect my hat pins, because they are much more affordable, and that is a collection that has been going on my entire life, passed on to me from my mom. I have a wall hanging for the pins at home, and eventually want to make a map wall hanging and use them to pinpoint places in the world I have been. Pins are much more reasonable than rings!
Afterwards, we hopped back onto our ATV and took a different road back to Imerovigli. This road was special because it took us by the sea, and I love water. We didn’t want to pass up the chance and so we stopped to park the ATV and got a chance to experience the water. We had to be quick though because we had to return the ATV.
We ended up keeping it for 2 hours longer, after asking the ATV rental people if we could keep it for just a little longer. They said “yes, no problem” and so we got to keep it and go on our special trip to get massages in Fira. Spa del Mar was the name of the massage place, and they even do walk-in appointments, but in this case we had booked in advance. You get to pick from 30 all the way up to 80 minute massages. The price was 40 EUR up to 120 EUR. We settled for a simple back massage, it was so relaxing. I really felt like my stress was gone after the massage.
Afterwards, we returned the ATV, said goodbye to the cute little white doggies, and walked back to the hotel. With our long day of adventure over, we relaxed at the hotel by enjoying our very last sunset dinner. They served my 2 favorite foods, chicken nuggets and ice cream, yummmmmyyyy! We got to enjoy our meal as the sail boats went by against the backdrop of the golden sunset. Unfortunately, our relaxation was slightly derailed as we found out our flight from Santorini to Cologne was cancelled, and so we had 2 options for plan B: to land in Dusseldorf or Frankfurt. Dusseldorf meant landing at 11 PM, which was late. It wasn’t so bad for me, but my friend Nada is from Koblenz, which is around 2 hours away. Landing in Frankfurt would mean getting to Germany at 2 PM, which would be nice because we would be home by 5 PM, however, the travel agency had already booked us for Dusseldorf. On the bright side though, this meant we didn’t have to fly out of Santorini until 8:30 pm the following day, which meant practically a whole extra day of exploration! Come by next week to see what day 5 had in store for us!
Come along with me on today’s journey in Greece by watching the following video.