Santorini

We have been married for one week!  CRAZY.

Friday morning we got a ferry to Santorini.  When we arranged the cab to the ferry on Thursday night the guy was really dramatic, we were cutting it too close, we'd never make it in time.  So we went when he suggested we go, and had to wait an hour before even boarding. 

I pictured a tiny little ferry boat but this thing was huge, like a cruise ship.  We got business class seats, thanks Michelle.  We were between a group of Italian teens.  Girls on on side, boys on the other.  Constant, and I mean constant, talking, flirting, selfies, laughing, trading seats, throwing things back and forth.  I finally asked them to shut up, they did.  Go old people!  I am 'that guy' now.

The port at Santorini is a nuthouse.  One ferry after the next dropping gangs of tourists.  Buses, tour guides, reserved cars, people trying to sell hotel packages all trying to find their peeps.  We couldn't find our guy, he finally showed up in a bit.

Santorini is this giant rock in the ocean.  Very, very tall and steep.  The drive to our hotel is super scary.  I chewed ginger and closed my eyes.  Switchbacks, cliffs, blind curves, etc.

We arrive in Oia and are met by this lady who shows us to our suite. It is hard to describe this place, so totally different from anything I've seen.  Kind of like a ski slope, there's this narrow ridge on the top.  That's where the main drag is, with all the shops and hotels off that.  It's not even a road, just a path.  The sides are so steep that everything else is below the walkway.  Like maybe the very closest shops are street level, but plenty of places are just a doorway, a sign, and steep staircase down. 

You look down and it's just a jumble of houses, patios, staircases, walkways, etc., abruptly ending about 100 yards down, and then there's just a cliff, like fall to your death cliff, down to the water.  Very steep.

To get to our room we follow the lady through a series of walkways, stairs, twisty paths.  At one point after going down a staircase we take a hard left and there's our place, essentially a cave under the staircase. One side is in the hill, all stone.  The other has windows that open out to the ocean view, amazing.  And it's laid out like this little hidey hole.  The couch is built into the stone wall, the rock from the cliff comes through the wall in a few places, the bed is just in a raised nook in the corner, on the floor, with floor-level windows opening out onto the ocean.

Bottom line: good one, Michelle (she found this place).

Some combo of lunch, napping, wandering, dinner.  We are still having trouble finding vegetarian options for Michelle.  It's been a lot of spinach pies and salad for her.

Michelle discovered, as my room-mates can attest, that I say weird stuff as I am drifting off to sleep.  Yesterday we were in the middle of a deep talk while I was falling asleep and evidently right in the middle of a sentence on-topic I said "how do they get an oven into these places?  they'd have to carry it by hand" and then pretty much fell asleep.  Later she asked me if everything was OK and I said "I really miss Glee".