Day 6 - Santorini, Greece

I will apologize now or the amount of pictures for this day. Santorini was the most beautiful and unique place that we went. I had a hard time selecting exactly what pictures to share. Santorini is a group of islands made from a volcanic eruption and so that are made of volcanic rock and pumis stone. There are about 5 islands that make up Santorini but only 2 of them are inhabited.This picture that looks like snow capped mountains is a view of Oia, one of the most unique places I have ever seen. More pictures of Oia are further down.

This is a view from on top of the cliff looking down into the water. Santorini's main island is sort of moon shaped and in the curved section is the worlds deepest caldera. That is what this picture is.
Santorini is known all over the world for it's award winning wine. (no we did not taste any) Because of the high winds that they get there they weave their grape vines into a sort of a basket and get them to grow low to the ground in order to protect the grapes. They also grow a lot of pistachio nuts.

We took a tour where we walked through a few little villages. This was a road we were walking down. I thought it was more like a sidewalk. I guess I am used to the wide open spaces of the west. Above the car you see a gate which was very common and the beginning and end of the villages. The bells symbolize the 3 saints watching over the village and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Santorini was full of Greek Orthodox churches. I think they said there were over 300 on the island. Most are privately owned. It is a great honor there to have a church built on you property. There are only 8 priest to service all those churches.
Here is a piece of prime real estate. Our guide told us and land is sold at a premium and this plot would sell for about 150,000 euro. Is anyone looking for a summer home?
We saw these guys selling fish on the side of the road. I was tempted to buy my lunch there. ("Ew")

This was a very interest old castle built by the Venetians. It was being renovated and people were living in it. Our guide told us houses in here were very expensive. Everyone wants to live in the castle.
This is me sitting on some one's front porch in the castle.
Nicolle and I walking through the castle. How would you like this to be the sidewalk you walked up to get to you home everyday?
I put this picture in here because this guy was so cute. As we walked by he waved and smiled at us. of course we could not communicate with him but he was so cute.

Julie snapped this picture. She was trying to get the little lady in the background but this cute family stopped and smiled for her. It was the first day back at school and we had just passed the school and they were returning from walking an older child to the school.
You may have notice the blue door and gates in the picture. Until recently it was a law that you had to paint your house blue and white. It is one of the things that make Santorini so unique. Our guide told us that 80 percent of the pictures that people see of Greece were taken in Santorini. The white house with blue are what you think of when you picture Greece. Nicolle was on the hunt for pictures of cute blue doors. This was my favorite that we took.
After our walk through the little villages we spent some time on a black sand beach. Black sand because it is volcanic rock.
This is a view of the little resort where we were at. It was the end of the tourist season so there was not a lot of people around. This is really the only beach time we had the whole trip. About 30 minutes after we left here is started raining.
This is Nicolle and Julie using our beach towel for protection from the rain.

This is a view of Oia. It is a village built just hanging of the top of the cliff basically.
Isn't is just beautiful and amazing?
Of course this beautiful village was a little perilous for me. I was wearing flip flops. (Day at the beach!) They did not have any traction on the bottom and all the streets were paved with stone or marble, very pretty and very dangerous for me. I had to wander around in my bare feet. I know I look great sporting the wet dog look.
This house was amazing to me. These people basically put a house front on a cave. They are living inside of the cliff . I wanted so bad to go knock on the door and ask to see inside. I was very curious as to what it would look like.
This was another place where basically they had put a door and some window in the rock to make a cave house.
I put this picture in because I think Nicolle's face is the best. We had ridden a city bus from one village to Oia and were waiting to catch it to go back. There was not really a formal bus stop we just went back to the place where the bus had dropped us off. It sort of looked like there was a line and so we tried our best to fine the back and like good little girls who are not used to using public transportation we waited. As soon as the bus was in sight all of these people came out the the wood work and started pushing and shoving to get on the bus. They didn't even make room for the poor people who wanted to get off the bus. We of course did not make it on that bus. We Waited forming what we thought was a line for the bus. Second bus shows up. Similar problem. Finally we made friends with some Australian ladies who had been waiting about the same amount on time. We did our best to form a line. We were now at the front and afraid of getting trampled we held hands and formed a semi circle that would allow the people getting off the bus to get off and held off the masses until we go on. It was a great experience to make me grateful that I don't have to us public transportation on a regular basis.

I put this picture in because it was one of my favorite pictures of Nicolle on this trip. I just think she looks beautiful in it which is not really fair because we had been walking in the down pouring rain. You saw the picture of what rain does to me.
Despite the rain we had a great day in Santorini. It is definitely and place I would love to go back and visit for a longer amount of time. If you have seen the movie The Sisterhood of the Traveling pants it was filmed here and one thing we did not get to do is ride a donkey up the mountain side. Next time I guess.