Santorini, Greece

This entire trip we've been extremely fortunate with weather. It hasn't rained a drop on us and with the exception of some partly cloudy weather here and there it's been almost completely sunny. Our weather in Oktoberfest was even described by some locals as the best in a century. Appearantly, the weather gods were taking a break when we arrived in Santorini. When we arrived in Santorini's airport it was cloudy and a little breazy. By the time we got to our hotel in the middle of town it felt like a full blown hurricane. As you can see in the picture, Lara isn't falling, she's just trying to fight the wind to get to our room. Since the weather wasn't being conducive for going to the beach the four of us explored the small town. We found the best gyro place ever, McDaniels. I think the owner was trying to play off of Jack Daniels as much as possible because Jack Daniel's face and logo were plastered everywhere but no the name 'Jack Daniels'. The secret to these awesome gyros, french fries. It adds about 500 calories and 20g of fat, but it tastes so good. It took us a few hours to explore the town and then the four of us went back to our hotel to ride out the storm. The reason we could see the town with the storm going on was because the town doesn't have any streets wider than 12 feet so we're protected from the wind almost the entire time.

Our hotel was awesome. Almost the entire hotel complex was in caves. Although our room didn't really have windows, the entry overlooked the cove of the island and our room totally felt like a cave. It was a cool cave though, Fred Flinstone would definitely be jealous.

The next day the sun started to come out and we decided to rent ATVs and explore the island. Checking out the island on ATVs was awesome. The island isn't very big so we were able to get from the center to the farthest part in less than 1/2 an hour. The four of us went to two beaches, stopping at a winery on the way. When the sun started to go down we set out for the opposite side of the island to watch the sunset. We caught the sunset from a rooftop restaurant as we ate a great dinner.

The weather was even better for our third day in Santorini. Since it was sunny and hot we decided to walk down to the old port of the island. The old port of Santorini is just that, it's the old port that is now used exclusively for small boats ferrying tourists to and from cruise ships and the nearby islands. The old port is also 588 steps down from the town and is serviced by a small gondola and pack mules. For the hike back up to town Lara and here mom, Maureen, decided to mule it. Your's truely acted as their personal photographer and was instructed to 'run up Tim and get a good picture' and 'you need to go faster to get a good picture'. Lara and Maureen had a great time riding the mules, I was a little winded.

To cool off we decided to ATV to the beach. The beach we found was great. The beach itself was good, but the food they served was one of the best lunches I've ever had. We thought we were ordering a mixed plate, instead we got a mixed seafood plate filled with local specialties and attractively displayed. We also had some cocktails. As you can see, we were definitely enjoying ourselves.

As the sun went away we headed back to town for our last few hours on Santorini. We had yet another great dinner in a rooftop restaurant. This one though, was on the crest of the island and allowed you to view both sides of this C-shaped island, very cool.

After dinner we gathered our stuff and headed to the ferry port of Santorini to catch our ferry to Bodrom, Turkey.....