We slept well that night, although it was a little strange to sleep in a cave environment. It was dead silent, too. Surrounded by all that rock we couldn’t hear anything from our neighbors above us or on either side. We kicked off our morning with some juice and fruit, and then tried out the shower. There was no curtain, but luckily there was a drain on the floor. I managed to get just about every surface wet.
Walking around Oia in the morning we noticed right away the lack of tourists. It was completely empty, except for a one or two shopkeepers and a couple of stray dogs. It was a nice way to look around town, although the rising sun was shining directly on the backs of our necks, which called for plenty of sunscreen. As for the lack of tourists, we later discovered that most of them come from cruise ships that dock down at the port, and then are bused to other parts of the island. The Oia buses are very popular, and later we saw them disgorging hundreds of tourists into the narrow streets.
For now, we had the place to ourselves, and so we took advantage and found a secluded café tucked into the hillside with another beautiful view of the ocean. The owner was a little grumpy at first, but she eventually warmed up to us. Another mission I wanted to take care of was to find a restaurant that I had heard about in the area, but it proved to be hard to find. So we decided to just wing it for dinner later on, and spent the rest of the day relaxing by the pool, reading, writing, taking naps, and doing a little shopping. The plan for Santorini was always to spend the time relaxing after rushing around Turkey and Spain, and I think we followed that plan perfectly. No special activities for us.
We did end up buying a really nice white Santorini wine from a local wine shop. The store owner recommended it and we were eager to wash away the bad experience from the previous evening. The wine was a little pricey, but when we opened it later we were pleasantly surprised. Rich, flavorful, and full-bodied, it was just what we needed to restore our faith in Greek wines.
While lounging at the pool we met a family of four Brits from London. They gave us some advice on local restaurants and eating out. They had been in Santorini for the past 9 days (!) and had plenty of opportunity to try many places to eat. They raved about how fresh all the seafood was, but coming from Japan we didn’t really place a high priority on eating fresh fish – we have pretty good access to fresh fish every day.
For dinner we ended up at a place just a few steps from our hotel called Petro’s. It was a two story restaurant with open-air dining on the top floor, and that gave us a great view of the sunset. We weren’t the only ones looking to watch the sunset – it seemed like the whole village was out on the narrow streets jockeying for position to watch. The restaurant was pretty good – a little better than the meal we had the previous night, but nothing earthshaking. We had four kinds of hummus, some fried cheese, and I had a lamb knuckle as a main dish, while Kuniko had the souvlaki. Not bad, not bad.
We went back to our place and sat out on the terrace as the moon rose, finished off our bottle of wine and also fixed up a cheese and meat platter thanks to the local grocery store. It was nice to just sit and talk and enjoy the peace of mind. It was hard to believe at the time but this was Monday, and back home in Japan everyone we knew was going back to work. We didn’t feel even a tinge of guilt as we stayed on vacation, however. We even went out for a nightcap at the local bar to celebrate the feeling – I had a passionfruit cocktail and Kuniko had a strong pina colada. It was yet another relaxing evening.
