Epic Europe Trip 2014 Day 4: Gorgeous Santorini
And just like that the first leg of our Epic Europe trip has come to a close. We woke up this morning early but luckily this time fell back asleep only to be jolted out of bed by our alarm at 5:30 AM. We got up, packed our stuff, and got ready for our next leg of the trip, Santorini.
We left the beautiful TomTom Suites at 7AM and had a driver take us to the airport, which is around thirty minutes away. We dropped off our bags, made our way through customs and security and grabbed a breakfast of champions, Burger King. To be honest it both sounded and tasted great. Jenn got a hamburger and fries and I got a double cheeseburger and fries. Its funny how sometimes on trips the taste of home are comforting.
We boarded our first leg of the journey from Istanbul to Athens at 9:30 and arrived an hour later. From there we made our way once again through customs, picked up our luggage and back in line to drop off our bags. Because Santorini is such a small airport there is no customs there so we were required to pick up our bags in Athens and drop them off again. This was fine because we had a four hour layover and it gave us something to do.
Once the bags were dropped off we sat down at a cafe and began the long wait for our forty-five minute flight to Santorini. We sat down at a table in a cafe and started playing cards. We even broke out Monopoly Deal, a monopoly card game that Jenn gave me for our anniversary. Once we got the rules down we blasted through three games of it. It was a ton of fun even if I did lose all three rounds. It absolutely will be making the rotation of board games that we play. We ended up grabbing lunch at the same cafe we had sat at for the previous couple of hours. Jenn got pasta with a pink cream sauce and bacon and I got a piece of pizza. It wasn't great but it did the trick.
After lunch it was time to start making our way to the gate. We made our way through security and not to long after boarded our plane to take us to Santorini. The flight only lasted 35 minutes and we arrived at the ridiculously small Santorini airport. We got our bags (which were the last two off the plane) and met up with our driver to take us to the Canaves Hotel & Suites in the beautiful city of Oia. When we stopped in Santorini on the cruise in 2012 we knew we wanted to come back, but never expected it to be this quick. Oia was the first stop on our tour in Santorini and was by far the most memorable. So when we started to approach Oia, all the memories started rushing back in.
We arrived at our hotel and were given a tour of the grounds and shown to our suite. Our room is two stories with an outdoor jacuzzi and a beautiful view overlooking the caldera. Once we got situated in our room we were then taken down to the bar to get a welcome drink. Jenn got a glass of red wine and I went with champagne. We sat out at the beautiful pool patio and just took in the gorgeous evening.
At that point it was time for dinner and we walked the city streets of Oia and randomly picked a restaurant for dinner. We started off with some zucchini fritters which were great although they needed some sort of sauce. For our main course I got the chicken kebab and Jenn got lamb and pasta. It was good but not the best Greek food we've had. The waiter could tell we were exhausted and was nice enough to give us some "free" (and then charged us for them) shots to close off the dinner. If you ever go to Europe just understand that free doesn't usually mean free.
After dinner we took a nice stroll back to our hotel and back to our gorgeous room and called it a night. Although today was mostly a travel day, everything went as smooth as it possibly could have and for that we are super grateful. More then anything Jenn and I are truly ready to embrace the relaxation that awaits us here in Santorini.
