Greece Trip (6/1/2007 - Sail to Santorini)

We booked Il's itinerary for him before he even arrived in Athens. The poor guy would have to conform to whatever we planned for his vacation in Greece. We used a travel agency called Agosta Travel, which locates right next to the laundry place we go to. We opted for the fast boat to Santorini, which takes less than 4 hours. If you choose the slow boat, you'll spend 7 hours on the ocean and it's really not worth it.

Il's hotel (Hotel Zeus) in Athens is a lot cheaper than ours. He only pays 12 euros a day and shares the room with three French beauties. Laundry is very expensive in Greece. A full load costs us 9.5 euros in Athens and 6.5 euros in Santorini. Generally speaking, Santorini is a lot cheaper than Athens. The trick is, you need to book your travel in Greece. If you try to book from the US or other countries, they'll always want to sell you the most expensive hotels, which can go up as high as US$500 per night.

We stayed at Hotel Cyclades in Santorini. It's 60 euros per night for double room and 50 euros per night for single room.

We took a taxi at 5 am to Pireaus Port, which cost 5.80 euros. Taxis are very cheap in Athens, but the driver always refuse to give you a lift. Sometimes the driver will collect a few customers in the same car and charge them each for full price.

We had breakfast at a restaurant next to the harbor since our boat doesn't leave till 7:20 am. Later we found out there are food and snacks on sale on the boat along with drinks and souvenirs. We all slept on the way to Santorini. The ship was operated by Hellenic Seaways and is quite clean, roomy and bright. One way trip cost 53 euros. The slow boat is almost half the price, but it's not worth the time.

Il sat next to two Australian girls during the trip.

We arrived by 11:30 at the port of Santorini. The hotel sent a green Ford van to pick us up. It's 5 euros per person for pick up service and another 5 euros for them to drop us off at the port when we leave the island.

High travel season will not start till June 15th so we had to go to a lot of places by ourselves because there is no tour bus yet.

We picked Ancient Thira in Kamari. The bus stop is 100 metres from our hotel. One thing you need to remember is that Ancient Thira is open only from 8:30 am to 2:30 pm. By the time we got there, it's already 2:30 and the last minibus was gone. The four of us decided to walk up the hill, which is a stoney path of about 2.8 km. It took us an hour to get up there, but the gate was already locked. We didn't see any ruins at all. Biajee and I decided to take Arnold here again after Il left on June 3rd.

We dined at an Indian Chinese restaurant owned by a man from Albania. The food was delicious, but nobody was there except us. This emphasizes the key to real estate: location, location, location.

We took a bus to Thira to watch the sunset, where Il abandoned us, taking the diaper bag, the camera and all Arnold's clothes. He went back to our hotel first so that he could grab his cell phone and call us. The walking distance from Thira to our hotel is 800 metres.

We had purchased a SIM card in Athens to get a local cell phone number. The issue is: I did not know how to recharge money after we used up the 5 euros. Everything was in Greek. Fortunately, people could still dial into our cell phone although we can't make any phone calls with it.