Last night in Santorini

Mom and I spent the better part of the day on the black sand beach of Perivolos.  Now back to Oia, a place from which, once again, the very stereotype of the Greek Islands may have been derived.  It looks like this:

That's a photo I took, not one from the global worldwide interwebs.  Mom and I spent a long time marveling over the fact that these places actually exist, in reality, not just in postcards.  I have not altered that photo AT ALL.  I mean, seriously!!!

We arrived here via Athens, where we had a lovely 24-hour stopover made all the sweeter by Argentina and team U.S.A. World Cup wins!  Slightly awkward: loudly cheering in a taverna as Argentina scores against the helpless Greek goalkeeper.

Visited in Athens the incredibly well designed new Acropolis Museum  before heading to the Acropolis itself.  I have a hard time capturing in words what it's like to stand in a place that you've read about in history books, and that you know represents the beginning of so much of Western culture.  Understandably, they are incredibly strict about acropolis-related activity, so, sadly, I have no jumping picture there.  But I did fall in love with the caryatids, both in and outside the museum.  They're the ladies, that are columns, that are ladies.  You know, these gals! :

After doing the historical stuff we did some shopping stuff, happening upon Kourbela Ioanna, the shop of the eponymous designer whose clothes-who-do-tricks are exactly my favorite kind of thing.  Also bought myself some komboloi beads to swing around and make noise with.  At lunch, the table next to ours, occupied by 6 men drinking ouzo or raki or something (very obviously) alcoholic, was clickety-clacking with the sound of komboloi beads.  So I got a tutorial from Alexander (he doesn't have email, so I promised I'd mail him the following photo) and went on my merry way swinging my komboli beads and feeling quite the local.

Had an excellent dinner at Psaras Taverna in Plakas, upon the recommendation of Stella (sister of designer Ioanna) and made our way to the port for our ferry to Santorini.

Well.  Our taxi driver, Jorogos, have an entirely different komboli strategy!  So I've been practicing both ways and will be developing my own method soon.  Got to the port, only to find out our ferry was "at least" 2 hours delayed.  The whole ferry experience was an unbelievable adventure, worthy of its own blog post.  Met a lovely couple from Canada to pass the time with as we waited...and waited...and waited...finally boarding the ship well after 2am and making our way to our adorable/terrifying little berth.  Anyway, we awoke in Santorini and that's a good thing.  Car rental.  Finding hotel.  Hating hotel.  Switching hotel.  Loving new hotel.  Loving new hotel manager, who suggested some great activities including a walk down to the port at Ammoudi to watch the sunset and enjoy delicious fresh fish.

Whew!  That's a lot of blogging.  Gotta save some for later.

I've been regaling mom with stories of my travels and realizing how few of them I've shared here on the blog (tsk, tsk)...I think because I'm reluctant to post about things that happened weeks and weeks ago.  Hey, all you commenters our there: still interested in events from the (not terribly) distant past?

Until soon then.
Julia