athens & santorini

My annual training this year took place in Athens, Greece. Mom & Dad came along and spent the days sightseeing. We went to dinners in the evening and we even found a bar, Brettos, my girlfriends and I went to in 2007 and drank some of their homemade liquor!

 

 

We left Athens EARLY Wednesday morning for the quick flight to Santorini. We arrived at our hotel well before check-in, so we laid out at the pool and watched the sun rise. Mom & I even fell asleep a for a little while. It was nice, but would have been nicer if it hadn't been cold! Once the sun came up though, it was gorgeous. We walked into the town of Oia and walked around taking pictures of all the beautiful views.

 

 

 

 Our hotel was really nice. We had our own little "villa".

We were pretty tired on Wednesday evening, so we went for an early dinner at the restaurant right next door to our hotel. The food was great. Dad enjoyed interrogating the waitress about the island life. And we had a lovely view of the sunset over Oia.

 

The next day, we had rented four-wheelers for the day. This was sooooooo much fun! We decided to rent two four-wheelers since mom didn't want to drive. So she rode with me. After a quick tutorial, we were off to go find a gas station on the main road. There were buses and other cars on this main, windy, hilly road and so we pulled over a few times to let them pass. Mom was a little nervous. After fueling up, we wanted to take the road along the sea, but we had to get down there somehow. Well....we did. We found the road down which was a STEEP switchback road. When we made it to the bottom, the breaks were warm to say the least! My arms were even tired from pumping the breaks the whole way! But we were having fun. We drove around through the farms and enjoyed the scenery.

 

After lunch, we made our way to the black sand beach - made from the volcano lava. Mom really wanted to put her feet in, but dad and I decided it wasn't worth wet, sandy feet going back into our tennis shoes.

 

 

After the black sand beach, we made our way back up on top of the hill and got lost, but it was great that we did because we managed to find Santo Wines. A beautiful winery overlooking the canyon.

 

 

 

After our wine tasting, we found our way to Red Sand Beach.

 

Our last stop of the day was at the very tip of the island at a lighthouse. The road there was quite narrow and had a very steep cliff off to the one side. Mom was a little nervous, but ensured me it had nothing to do with my driving!

 

We enjoyed a few Mythos beers on our balcony in the evenings.

 

 

On our last evening, we took our four wheelers into the town of Oia (our hotel was just outside the town) and watched the beautiful sunset over the water and then had dinner.

 

Our flight back to Athens was Friday evening, so we spent the day Friday walking around Fira.

 

 

Santorini was even more beautiful than I had expected it to be. We had so much fun in our days there.