The “swine flu break”…

I was able to go to Santorini and Ios, two of the most famous Greek islands, during mid-October when almost all the schools in Athens were closed for a week due to swine flu. Santorini is by far the most beautiful place I have ever been. I ventured there on a 9 hour ferry (!!!) with Kristin, Elyse, Molly, Claire, and Allyson.

Our trip got off to a bit of a rocky start when we checked the beds of the first hotel we were going to stay in, and discovered that things were, well, let’s just say not as clean as we would have liked… but after arguing a bit with the owner to get our money back, we successfully found a very cute, quaint hotel to stay in and were on our way. (thanks Lonely Planet!) We spent a night in Fira, the main city of Satorini, and then spent the next three in Oia.

I think I took more pictures on this trip than I have in my lifetime. While we were there, we rented a car and saw/did the following things: the black sand beach, the red sand beach, an ancient city on the highest point of the island, rode what I still think was a pirate ship over to the volcanic island, toured the volcanic island (still active!), went wine tasting at a winery over’ooking the sea, RODE DONKEYS from the old port to the top of Oia (like in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which was filmed in Oia), I went cliffdiving off an island you have to swim to from the port (probably about 15-20 feet, nothing too high, one of the guys we were diving with tried to get me to go up like 60 feet, I said no way! but I have included a picture from when he did it), and finally, we explored around the cute little shops.

After Santorini, Claire, Molly, Allyson and I hopped over to Ios. It is about 30 minutes from Santorini. Ios is a smaller island, known for it’s crazy nightlife. We caught this island on the tail end of high season so things were a bit calmer (I think we were all thankful for this). We spent our time making new friends (5 guys from Seattle who know Shoshana and Olivia!), laying out on the beach, and being denied vespas when we tried to rent them (apparently you need an international driver’s license or motorbike license… personally I think he just had it out for us because we were females). Overall it was a wonderful trip. Hopefully I’ll get to do it again when spring/summer roll around!

Next up… Allyson and I have a trip to Ireland in the works. I’ll keep you posted.

Flip though my favorite pictures from our Santorini/Ios trip: