Greek Island Trip

Today was one of our travel days. We woke up early so that we could have breakfast before the bus picked us up at 7:50am. The bus took us to the port where we met the Flying Cat 4, a high speed catamaran that transports people between the islands, to take us to Santorini. Unfortunately while the seat numbers on our tickets made it look like we'd be sitting together, in fact they had us sitting in the very last row in the back of the ferry on opposite sides of the boat from each other. This was completely unacceptable, especially with it being our honeymoon. Finally after a bit of arguing with the crew and waiting a bit, they seated us together toward the front. Unfortunately we weren't near any of the windows, so we couldn't see much of what was going on outside other than waves flying past the windows. While the design of the cat allows it to pierce the waves as it's traveling very fast, it still rocks a bit, but it didn't seem to bother either of us.

When we got to the Daedalus Hotel, the rooms weren't ready yet, so we decided to explore the town a bit. We walked up a road toward the Atlantis Hotel and found the Museum of Prehistoric Thira, which we toured later in the day. We then walked back down to the main road and decided to find someplace for lunch. We ending up at Mama's House only a short distance away. When we walked down to the restaurant we received a very warm greeting from Mama herself. After a very pleasant meal we headed back to the hotel to get checked in.

I think we got a little spoiled by the hotel in Crete. While both the Daedalus Hotel in Santorini and the Grand Hotel in Crete are listed as four star hotels, they are clearly not in the same class. Our room in Santorini was about half the size with poor plumbing and hot water that felt more like less cool cold water.

After settling in to the hotel we decided to explore more of Fira (Thera) and do a little shopping. Fira is very interesting, built into the rim of the volcano with all the building stacked and clustered to each other and many stairs leading in every direction. While at first it seems like it would be very easy to get lost, all of the paths interconnect and as long as your headed in the right direction you'll get where you're going. With the day time heat starting to build we decided it would be a good idea to head back to the hotel and check out the pool.

Again we were spoiled with our first hotel. The pool at the Daedalus as far as pools go is a great pool. It starts out at 1.5 meters and quickly drops off to 3 meters. Compared to the pools at the grand hotel the water was much cooler and the pool was not as meticulously clean, but it was still a great pool. They even had a nice whirlpool that you can swim into directly from the main pool. After swimming for a bit and cooling off we relaxed in one of the cabanas.

For dinner we wanted to eat at a restaurant with a great view of the sunset. Having looked at a few reviews on Trip Advisor we had the name a place we wanted to try, but after finally finding the restaurant we decided to try a restaurant closer to the caldera. After wondering around a bit we decided to try a restaurant that the maitre d had waved us over to. It had a nice view of the caldera and the sunset and very good food. [See review posted on Trip Advisor]