I dragged myself out of bed after two hours sleep so I could leave at 4am and catch a bus to my flight. All went quite smoothly, actually, and I arrived and checked in to my hotel on Santorini just after 8am (room was available so I didn’t have to wait). Opted for a quick nap and began my day around 11am instead.

I spent much of the day walking around Fira, where my hotel is located. Some of it is shut down, but most of it is still very much bustling. I wandered up a bit to grab a picture of the town (which is built on the volcanic caldera).

Later that evening I took a walk along the coastline some more and grabbed a photo around sunset.

And I haven’t really been keeping track of my coffee shops and bars or restaurants very well, but there’s a decent one right across the street that I should share. Because I used their WiFi a lot today as I milked a coffee or a beer for a couple hours. It’s called The Pure. And I’m drinking this Greek beer.

I decided not to rent a car or ATV, because the idea of it sounds exhausting to me. And the buses work fine. I got up and took one down to Akrotiri, a town that has an ancient excavation site by it. The town was messed up by an earthquake, and then buried in volcanic ash.

Just down the road from this was a red sand beach. It was aptly named. The actual grains of sand were red, white, and black though.

And then I took the bus back to the main town and relaxed, grabbed some lunch, then started a 3-hour hiking trek to Oia to see the sunset. Of course I went in my jeans and didn’t bring any water.

All the postcard pictures and “this is Santorini” pictures are of the Oia sunset. Although most of the architecture is like this throughout the island. Really cool actually. It’s a strange way to build houses, but they’re all styled similarly, very unique, and it makes walking around here kind of cool.

I took the bus back to Fira, because it was getting dark and walking 3 hours again would have been stupid.

Sunday morning I chilled out, walked along the coast a bit, and had some coffee at one of the main bars there and did a little bit of work. All with the intention of catching the 12:40 bus to Kamari, which I did. Actually, I got off a little early to walk through the vineyards and check out a winery and brewery.

Unfortunately, it being low season and Sunday, both the brewery and winery were closed, but I walked around them anyways.

After, that I went to my hotel, but the one I booked wasn’t open, so I spent a couple hours trying to contact them and walk back and forth. This church grew on my the 4th or 5th time I walked past it.

The main attraction of Kamari and Perissa is their black sand beaches, which I walked along for a while. As you might imagine, it looks like a beach, except the sand is black.

Since my hotel fell through, I took to AirBnb to try to find someone alive on this side of the island. I got a quick response from someone, but they were in Perissa. That’s the next town, which actually wasn’t too far away at all, but unfortunately there was a mountain in the way.

I tried to stay on the trail, but I amazed myself with how incapable I still am at deducing the stupidity of a situation by climbing up this. Not sure why I thought it was the right way. The trail was marked with a climbing guy on it, not walking guy. Don’t take the climbing guy trails.

And as you can see here, about 50 meters to the right was the actual path, which just wound up the hill.

But getting to the top made it worth it, I guess. At least that’s what I’m going with. At least now I can skip leg day.

The walk down wasn’t so bad. I was hoping that the person had responded and I’d be able to find a place to stay here. And while the sunset on Oia was nice I guess, I’d take this one any day.

Made it down and walked through a desolate town until I finally found a beach bar to chill and grab WiFi. The AirBnb angle was a success, and he picked me up and took me to my home for the night. Way better than freezing to death. It isn’t one of those quintessential places you see in pictures (for $225 euro/night), but it has all the traditional architecture, and even the beds are Santorini-blue (I’m adding that to my color vocabulary, FYI). Grabbed some dinner at a nice place by the black beach, sipped a beer, and then went back to the room to catch up on work for the week.

The guy took me to the airport too, which made my life a lot easier. Got on my plane successfully and landed in Athens by 9am. Now I’m safely back to a Starbucks to work for a bit before checking back into a hostel.