Santorini, Greece - part 2

I shouldn't have been as worried about the driving of the rental car, but most importantly, the finding of it. Brea and I checked out of our hotel and thought it would be a simple question to have the hotel owner direct us to Europcar. The reason this is so complicated is that all the addresses on these islands are "Store Name, City, Island" - no street names and definitely no address numbers. And even though the villages are compact, it's not like there is just one central square from which you can throw a rock and hit everything you need to find.

So, after several phone calls to wrong numbers and investigation on the web, we *somehow* found the office location in Fira. Once we got there, it was clearly marked and now seems "obvious" but it did take us awhile. I conveniently forgot my license, which worked well because there is no way I could have driven a manual car on those hills without it rolling backwards and injuring people and other vehicles. We reduced the excess (i.e. the insurance deductible) down to 150 Euros, which loosely translated means that we could total the car and only pay 50 Euros each to solve the problem.

We didn't get as small of a car as was pictured on the reservation website. We actually got a 4 door Nissan Micra, in a very cute orange colour and we nicknamed our car Constantinos after our funny waiter from the night before. Kylie drove the car first and we headed back towards our hotels to pick up our luggage. She was a bit nervous on the skinny roads and the jury is still out on if the thump we heard was her hitting a woman's arm or just her handbag, but the woman didn't seem too upset so we carried on (!).

Next stop, Kamari beach. After the previous day's recon mission, we knew where we wanted to park ourselves on the beach, so we promptly set ourselves up under the umbrella and started to do a whole lot of nothing.....the day included the best lunch we had at Elia, a bit of shopping for presents, and taking the coastal route on the east side of the island up to Oia where we checked into our new hotels for the next few days.

Brea and I were staying at Finikia Place, a great hotel with an ocean view open patio, fantastic pool area, and yummy breakfast on the ocean view terrace. Brea, Kylie and I explored Oia on our first night and found it to be much nicer than Fira, albeit more touristy. It had a Laguna Beach vibe, lots of art galleries, ocean view restaurants and everything just a bit upscale.

On Saturday, we lay out by the pool in the morning and went to the Red Beach in the afternoon. This place was really beautiful, and well worth the short hike to get there from the parking lot. The contrast of the blue water with the red rocks was really striking. Here, Brea and I discovered a really good microbrew beer and a Carte D'Or chocolate ice cream flavour with chilli pepper!

Our last night in Oia we ate at Papagopolous. This was up there with Mistral for the best meal of the trip. Crab ravioli with a kir royale and lamb shank with a Greek version of a Bordeaux were all fantastic. It was a really good night, despite the random pack of dogs that sort of escorted Brea and I back to our hotel.

Sunday was a long travel day, involving returning Constantino, taking a bus to the Santorini airport, flying to Athens, flying to London, taking the train from Stansted into Liverpool Street and then the Underground and another train to Wimbledon. Phew! With barely time for Nando's before it closed, we were exhausted!

In all, it was an amazing trip. I got to meet up with friends along the way, and spend more time with Brea than I think we ever have! The weather was perfect, the islands were beautiful, and I enjoyed being away from city life and mediocre, at best, weather. Yep, even though I'm back to reality now, life is good.