Italy 2014 - Some thoughts

I want to jot down some random thoughts about our trip to Italy

• Onions. Almost non-existent on most menus. While it's a staple topping on most pizzas in India and the US, it was almost impossible to find onion as a topping for pizzas
• Tomatoes. Absolutely the juiciest, firmest and most scrumptious tomatoes I've ever tasted. No wonder their pizzas and pasta taste so good. I don't know what the secret is to grow such delicious tomatoes but I thoroughly enjoyed them
•  If you ask me, all the vowels that were taken away from Polish names were given to the Italians. I would routinely see names with 5 vowels strung together like "iaiou" or something. How in the world are we supposed to pronounce that?
• Antique water fountains in Rome. Water is always pouring out from them. Cold, clean, sweet water that was very refreshing for us on our long walks through the city. It's a harsh comparison to India where there's so much scarcity of water.
• The famed pickpockets. We didn't see them anywhere except possibly in the Termini (Rome's railway terminus).
• The standard feature in almost all multi-storeyed apartment buildings in and around Rome was a balcony with colorful flowers and shrubs.
• The underground metro is not as sophisticated (is that the right word?) as the ones in New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, London or Paris but they are pretty heavily used especially during peak hours.
• The Tuscan countryside is really very scenic and enjoyable. The ideal way (like one of my friends recommended but which we didn't do) is to rent bicycles, motorcycles or your own car and freestyle your way across the region visiting farms, tasting wine, cheese, etc. as well as getting to know the people. If you learn Italian, it would make it that much easier to blend in.
• Venice is a charming but a very, very confusing city to visit. Most tourist guides tell you to "get lost" in Venice and believe me, it's very easy! The streets are often unmarked and very, very narrow. Familiarity by repeated traversal is the only solution, it seems.

Trip to Greece - Summary

Weather

It's brutally hot in Greece in the end of August / early September. There aren't too many trees, except for the National Garden in Athens, so you're usually exposed to the elements. Sunscreen is a must and remember to re-apply sunscreen every 2-3 hours, regardless of your skin color.

Santorini is also very hot but there's usually a breeze blowing from the sea that helps to make it feel slightly more tolerable than Athens. Athens, by far, felt the hottest followed by Thessaloniki (slight sea breeze), Delphi, Meteora and Santorini.

Veganism

Greeks, by and large, are more aware of the meaning of "veganism". It's better to not confuse them by explaining what "vegan" means. Trying to elaborate by saying "no cheese, no butter, no meat, no eggs, no fish", etc will only serve to confuse them, in my opinion. Athens has several options for food and desserts that are either 100% vegan or have clearly labeled vegan items on the menu. The choice narrows when you move to other places. Thessaloniki has a few and Santorini has a few but they're practically non-existent when you go to small places like Delphi and Kalambaka/Meteora.

Driving

Driving in Greece can change from very easy to very difficult. Within the city (Athens/Thessaloniki), driving can be a bit of a challenge because you share the narrow streets with cars, vans, 2-wheelers and pedestrians. 2-wheelers are quite challenging to deal with because none of the traffic rules seem to apply to them and they often tend to take you by surprise. Greek car drivers can also be impatient if you are are too careful or defensive. Out on the highway though, driving is as easy as, if not easier than, the US. Speed limits on the A1 go as high as 130 kmph (which equates to more than 80 mph), so you can really step on the gas. The downside, though, is that the speed limit keeps changing dramatically within short distances. So, within a couple of kilometers of driving, the speed limit can swing wildly from 130 kmph to 80 kmph and back to 100 kmph. So, if you really want to stick to the speed limit, you can almost never use the cruise control feature in your car. The strange thing is that the terrain or the road conditions would not have changed in any way to warrant the change in speed limits, so I'm not quite sure why the Greek highway authority decided to keep changing the speed limits at such short intervals.

Driving in Santorini can pose a different kind of challenge. First, the roads are often winding and narrow and either ascending or descending steeply. So, you have to be extra mindful about all these things as you drive. Add to this the fact that you share the road with tourists driving 2-wheelers, ATVs, Quad-bikes and buses and it can definitely test your driving skills. Parking in Santorini is EXTREMELY difficult to find. There are several free / public parking lots in each town but with the number of tourists that are usually on the island, you'll be hard-pressed to find an empty spot. We got lucky on a couple of occasions but also had to shell out 12 Euros for a parking spot another time.

Finding your way around

Google Maps and/or Apple Maps can be your friend for most of your driving but when it comes to walking around in the narrow lanes in small towns like Pyrgos, Oia, Emporio, Fira, etc. on Santorini, these apps can get confused and keep rerouting you in different directions. We ended up not going to a couple of places because of this. One solution could be to use the apps as a reference and create your own path/directions to your destination.

Getting cash from ATMS

The maximum number of digits for the ATM PIN that Greek ATMs accept is 6. We were not able to withdraw any money because I've set an 8-digit PIN for my BOA debit card. So, be mindful of this and reset your PIN to 6 or fewer digits before you leave for Greece.

Very early (and hazy) memories

I have very few, if any, memories of my baby-hood and childhood. I was born when my father was posted to Kolkata (or Calcutta in those days). We lived in a railway colony in a place called Garden Reach. Garden Reach was on the west bank of the Hooghly River and I have vague memories of living in a fairly high floor (like higher than the 2nd floor). I remember hearing the honking of ships that navigated on the river. My mother used to tell me some stories about relatives that used to frequently visit us like my Vittal uncle or my cousin, Prakash Rao. Apart from this, I don't recall anything of my life in Kolkata. One story that my mother used to like relating more than once is about how I used to try to comb my great-grandmother's "hair". This was during a visit to Bengaluru when I was a tiny kid/infant. It seems that I used to observe my mother brushing her hair with the comb and wanted to try doing it too. My great-grandmother was widowed by then and going by traditional Hindu customs prevalent at that time, she was forced to shave off the hair on her head. The justification of this abhorrent tradition was that it would make the woman unattractive to other men which would prevent any thoughts of remarriage. Anyway, in spite of her not having any hair, it seems I would take a comb and try to brush her "hair" while she was lying down or sleeping which would make her laugh!

Trip to Greece - Day 12 (Sept 6, 2025)

The alarm woke us up at 3am and we didn't have much to do except brush our teeth, freshen up a bit, change clothes and go down to the lobby to wait for our bus. There were a few others that had also signed up for the 3:30am shuttle. The bus came on time and we were dropped off at the airport terminal at 3:45am.

We headed to the Air France counters to drop off our suitcases and noticed that the line was already quite long. Fortunately, the line was moving at a good pace and we had finished dropping off our suitcases in about 30 min We headed towards security/immigration and were done with the formalities in about 15 min. The flight was on time and we had seats in row 17 which was right over the trailing part of the wing (my favorite place!). The flight to Paris was uneventful and smooth. Both Sahana and I slept for the most part since we had woken up at an ungodly hour. The only "meal" they served was some package stuff and there were no vegan options so we politely declined and just had the coffee.

In Paris, we had a roughly 4 hour layover plus there was no need to go through security check one more time, so we had plenty of time to while away at CDG. We couldn't find anything vegan to eat in Pret a Manger or Starbucks, so we bought packet of potato chips and had coffee with chips and a protein bar that Sahana had packed in her carry-on. We weren't feeling super energetic, so we didn't follow our usual practice of walking from one end of the terminal to the other and instead just ended up sitting in one place and browsing/reading/playing on our phones.

The flight to IAD was also on time We were seated in row 32 which was again just at the trailing edge of the wing. The seating arrangement for the 777 was 3-4-3. However, the lady assigned to the seat next to Sahana opted to move to the seat across the aisle so we had the 3 seats to ourselves for the whole flight. About an hour after the flight took off, they served us lunch (or maybe it was dinner, who knows!). We were given our vegan meals and it was surprisingly very yummy. We finished every little morsel, especially because we were quite hungry by then. After that, Sahana alternated between sleep and watching 3 movies while I really couldn't get much sleep. I tried but didn't get deep sleep. I ended up watching 2 episodes of Brooklyn 99, a few episodes of Friends and a movie (The Darjeeling Limited). And, of course, I played some of the games on the plane's entertainment system. There was a golf game that was terrible, and there was Sudoku and some trivia game that I liked.

Towards the end, things got a bit dramatic. Just as we were flying above Boston, the flight experienced quite a lot of turbulence. As is my usual practice, I frequently check the compass app on my phone to see which way we were heading. By my reckoning, we should have been heading Southwest or West. Instead, I was shocked to see that we were heading Northwest and after a few minutes, we were actually heading North, towards Canada. I was confused because the captain hadn't said anything except that there was some turbulence. For the next 30-40 min, we kept flying away from our destination and although I knew that there was probably nothing to worry about, I was mystified by the fact that the captain or the crew were so non-communicative. Finally, the plane started turn towards the West and finally towards the Southwest. We started getting closer to IAD and the weather also started to clear up.

We ended up landing about 10 min late which isn't too bad at all. Armed with our Global Entry card, it took us all of 15 seconds to get through immigration. The guy just asked for our names and said that we could go. It took a while for our luggage to arrive though, so that neutralized some of the advantage we got from our Global Entry card because some of the other passengers caught up with us, I think.

Anyway, we picked up our suitcases and headed to the Uber waiting zone. Our driver came in 5 min and we reached home at around 6:15pm. And, that was the end of our trip to Greece!

Trip to Greece - Day 11 (Sept 5, 2025)

Our last day in Santorini was free for us to do whatever we chose. Since we had a rental car at our disposal, we were prepared to look for sightseeing spots far from where we were located in Fira. The first thing we wanted to do is actually visit the town of Oia and see what it has to offer. Oia is, by far, the most famous of towns on Santorini, well known for its white houses with blue domes. When we reached Oia on our Fira-to-Oia 10km walk a couple of days ago, we didn't really enter the town to look around. We just caught the bus to return to Fira. Today, we wanted to walk through the town of Oia and see what it had to offer. We were very lucky to find a spot in a public parking lot. After parking the car, we walked through (yes, you guessed it) narrow, charming and winding lanes. Unlike Pyrgos and Emporio though, these lanes were highly commercial like the ones in Fira with retail stores lining both sides selling clothes, souvenirs, tours/excursion, rental cars/bikes, food, etc. Apparently, four cruise ships had arrived in Santorini that day, so the lanes were jampacked with tourists from the cruise ships. They completely blocked progress because they would be in huge groups of 50-60 people and some of them would be old and move slowly or the guide would stop and explain something, so the whole group would be stationary for a while. We wanted to visit the ruins of the Old Castle of Oia, so we made our way there. From here, we could see the classic views of the houses that often see in advertisements of Santorini and/or Greece. The white houses on the hillside with blue domes. Although the blue domes are far fewer than what you see in pictures and in advertisements, it's still a very pretty sight. There was also a guy playing traditional Greek music (the song from Zorba the Greek) on a bouzouki, which was beautiful to hear. The dance of Zorba the Greek (called Sirtaki) is extremely fascinating and I was hoping that there would be a Greek native that would also do the dance but that didn't happen! We did some souvenir shopping before heading back to the parking lot.

We drove back to the Ethos Vegan Suites and checked out of our room. We told our host that we would like to leave our luggage in the hotel while we did a bit of sightseeing to which he readily agreed.

The next spot we decided to visit was something that Ashwin had suggested. It's a place called Heart of Santorini. It's basically a naturally formed hole in the limestone rock that form the wall of the caldera. Some people say that it looks like the shape of a heart (not a biological heart but the "love" heart). The Heart of Santorini is again on the south side of the island, close to the Akrotiri Lighthouse that we had visited the previous day. The route was essentially the same and it took us about 25 min to get there. Fortunately, there were some parking spots available when we reached so we parked the car and set off to find the Heart of Santorini. It involved a descent down a rough path and then a few steps. It was easy to find and it wasn't very crowded. After a short wait, we were able to get a good view and another visitor even offered to take a pic of the two of us standing "in" the heart.

With that mission accomplished, we walked down further to a small (what else?) church. It was actually open but we didn't go inside. Instead, we took in the gorgeous views on all sides with the Aegean Sea, the caldera rim/walls, and the islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni and Thirassia in the distance. We never got tired of these views, no matter how many times we saw them.

We walked back up to the parking lot and noticed something that I'd forgotten about. Santorini is famous for old, abandoned windmills from a long time ago. These windmills aren't like the regular ones we've read and heard about like from Don Quixote or something. They are shorter/smaller buildings and the shape of the windmill vanes is different. Anyway, we saw one in the distance, so we walked up to it to take a few pics and then headed back to our car.

The final stop for the day was to go for lunch to a restaurant called Tranquilo Bar. This restaurant is on the beach in a place called Perissa. Perissa is famous for its black sand beaches and Tranquilo is almost on the beach. There's only a small road that separates it from the beach. It's a very hip, multicultural place with a cool vibe. Lots of posters of different countries and famous personalities from those countries are posted all over the walls. The soft background music is usually from different genres and different locales. The servers walk around in bare feet! We were in a bit of a hurry because we had to return the car before 3:30pm and we had a long-ish way to drive back and we also had to refill the gas tank before returning the car. So, we quickly placed our order and waited impatiently for it. We didn't really get to enjoy the ambience and the environment. We gobbled down our food quickly, paid up and left as soon as we could. We headed back to the gas station, filled the gas tank and made our way back to the parking lot that we had been instructed to leave the car in. The guy that had dropped off the car the previous day (a Pakistani in Greece!) had told us about this parking lot and told us to leave the keys in the car under the driver's side mat and just leave the car there, unlocked! He said that it was perfectly safe to do that and that we shouldn't worry. Anyway, we drove to that parking lot, I took a video all around the car to show that it was still in good shape, left the keys under the mat as instructed, and then sent a message to the car rental company with the video saying that we that we had returned the car. After a while, I got the acknowledgement from the car rental company, so we were good to go.

We headed back to Ethos Vegan Suites to pick up our luggage. I checked with our travel agent about the location that we need to be at to be picked up by our driver for the ride to the airport. After a little bit of confusion, the location was agreed upon and we picked up our luggage from the hotel and went to the place to wait for our car. The car came a bit later than expected but the drive to the airport was quite short. We reached the airport well in time for our flight back to Athens. We dropped off our suitcases at the counter and went to our gate. The flight was on time and this time, it wasn't a turboprop. The flight was shorter though, just 50 min gate to gate and about 30 min of flying time!

We reached Athens on time but Athens airport has a bad reputation for being mismanaged, so we ended up waiting for our suitcases for an hour, more than twice the amount of time that our flight took. It was very frustrating and painful to wait at the carousel with no updates or information about when we could expect our suitcases to arrive. Finally, we got our suitcases and had to go and look for the hotel shuttle that would take us to our hotel. We were staying in a Holiday Inn very near to the hotel (about 15 min drive). The instructions said that we were supposed to turn right after exiting the terminal and look for some kind of parking but we (or I) didn't follow the instructions and instead, we ended up going to the wrong place to wait for the bus. Then, I went hunting around in various places and when that didn't work, I called the hotel for more clarity. They repeated what was mentioned in the instructions and after a bit more searching around, we found the place to wait in. The next shuttle was only at 9pm, so we had to wait for it. It was about 9:30pm by the time we got into our room. Initially, we signed up for the 2:30am shuttle to be dropped off at the airport but after talking about it, we decided that we could risk taking the 3:30am shuttle and reaching the airport by 3:45am which is technically less than the recommended 3 hours before our 6:30am flight. We had initially planned to have something to eat before sleeping but we couldn't find anything or any good restaurant nearby that had a decent vegan menu, so we decided to have a quick shower, eat a protein bar and go to sleep, since we had to wake up at 3am for our shuttle back to the airport.

Trip to Greece - Day 10 (Sept 4, 2025)

Today was the day that we were scheduled for a short cruise to a volcanic island and then to another nearby island that featured some hot springs.

But first, we were presented with breakfast by Coskun, our host. Today, breakfast featured chickpea omelets with a salad on top, chocolate pudding with blueberries, bread with homemade PB & strawberry jam and the lemon/mint-infused watermelon juice. Once again, the breakfast was delicious and very filling.

After breakfast, we got ready early because we had to be at the Old Port of Fira before 10:30am in order to board our cruise boat/ship by 11am. We debated going down to the Old Port using the steps versus the cable car. Finally, we decided to try the steps and then decide if we had the energy to climb back up or take the cable car when we returned from the cruise. The path down to the Old Port featured around 600 steps. That may not sound too bad when you're going down but there are two big problems that make it very unappealing, as we were to find out soon. First, because the slope of the path is very steep, your legs start shaking as you approach the end of the path. Each step is very wide, so you walk a couple of paces and then take one step down and you keep doing that almost 600 times. It can play havoc on people who have bad knees or hips. For me, it was more that my legs were shaking by the time we hit the 500 step mark. The second and more important point is that you share the entire path with donkeys that are used to cart people up and down the steps. Each entourage, if I may call it that, consists of about 10 donkeys and they don't walk in single file. They're probably super disgruntled about what they're forced to do every day, so they walk randomly across the entire width of the path. So, you have to dodge and weave among the donkeys as they cross you and it's even worse if they're going in the same direction as you because you just have to pick one side and hope that none of them chooses that side and crushes you. These donkeys, by the way, are not your standard issue donkeys that you see in India. They are as big and heavy as medium-sized horses. Each entourage of horses has an owner but he doesn't really bother to keep them walking in an organized fashion or anything. And, oh, did I mention that these donkeys are frequently crapping all over the place, so we are treated to the splendid aroma of donkey crap while we are walking down. Plus, we need to be really careful about where we're placing our foot because, of course, donkey crap!

Anyway, it took us way longer than planned to reach the Old Port of Fira and our next step was to find the counter or office of the cruise company where we had to register or check in. After a bit of a search, we found the place and confirmed our registration for the cruise. We had a 20-25 min wait before we boarded. Our ship was a schooner-type of vessel but without any sails deployed. It ran using a regular set of engines, I presume. We boarded the ship and immediately moved to the top deck which was open to the elements. We didn't mind the sun and felt that we would get a better view from the upper deck. There were probably about 80-100 passengers in total as we set off to the first stop.

The first stop is Nea Kameni which is a volcanic island with several different vents or craters but only one of them is active in terms of some sulfur gas emission. The climb is about 400 ft and the trail gets a bit rough at times (gravelly or mix of gravel and loose, large stones). The guide from the ship accompanied us and gave us a brief introduction to the history of the island and how Santorini was formed several centuries ago. Compared to the 10km walk on the previous day, this climb was relatively easy and we were able to get some very nice views of the main island of Santorini and the Aegean Sea around us.

We headed back down to our ship and proceeded to the next stop which is Palaia Kameni. Here, the ship would not be docking at a pier but stay anchored about 200ft from shore. Any passengers that were strong swimmers would dive off the ship into the water and swim the remaining 200ft to the shore where the water was of a different color due the presence of sulfur and iron from a hot spring. The temperature of the water is also reported to be higher than the surrounding sea. Obviously, neither Sahana nor I ventured into the water because we don't know how to swim. Half of the passengers on the ship did opt to dive into the water and swam to the hot springs. They stayed there for about 30 min before the ship captain tooted the horn to signal departure back to Santorini.

The journey back to the Old Port of Fira was relatively uneventful and we chose that time to just relax and enjoy the breeze and the color of the sea. By the time we reached the Old Port of Fira, we had already decided that we weren't mentally prepared to endure another round of donkey crap and watching the donkeys being abused for the convenience of human beings. We paid for the cable car ride which took us up to the top in just a few minutes.

The next time on our agenda was to pick up a rental car. I had already booked the rental car in advance and we had arranged to meet at a local supermarket parking lot in Fira to pick up the car. After a fairly long wait, a guy turned up with the car and had us sign the paperwork and do a quick inspection before handing us the keys. The first thing we did is to head back to the hotel to freshen up a bit. Fortunately, we found a parking spot in the public parking lot next to Ethos Vegan Suites.

We were on our way in about 15 min, heading to the first sightseeing point, the Akrotiri Lighthouse. The lighthouse is on the southernmost tip of the island of Santorini so it was a fairly long drive. The road to the lighthouse meandered along the west coast of the island frequently giving us gorgeous views of the ocean and the caldera. By then, we had stopped trusting Google Maps and were finding it more reliable to use Apple Maps. We reached the lighthouse and walked around, taking in the views and taking pics. After spending about 15 min there, we drove to a nearby town called Emporio. Like Pyrgos on the day before, Emporio is a small town with charming, narrow, winding lanes. Like Pyrgos, there is a castle (ruined, of course) at the top of a hill. We found a public parking lot with one free spot and parked the car there and began our climb. In these narrow lanes, neither Google nor Apple could help us with directions. We aimlessly wandered around the different lanes looking for the castle but gave up after 30 min. Thankfully, we had remembered to save the location of the parking lot else we would have had a real problem on our hands! We mostly relied on our memory to guide us back to the parking lot.

Now, it was time to go to Oia where we had made reservations for a sunset dinner (following the fiasco of the previous day!) at Oia Gefsis. It was a long-ish drive by Santorini standards and it took us a while to reach. None of the public parking lots had any empty spots and there were cops that were forcing people to keep moving and not wait for a spot to open up. Since our reservation time was coming up, we had to make the painful decision to use a paid parking lot (12 euros for 5 hours!). We parked the car and walked to the restaurant. We were a few minutes early but we were pleasantly surprised to find that the restaurant had upgraded us to seats on the terrace although we had reserved seats indoors. So, we could hope to see the sunset, after all. The seats that we were shown to were not ideal in the sense that they were not against the back wall of the restaurant which would give us an unobstructed view of the sunset. Instead, there would be several tables and customers in between us and the view of the sunset. But, oh well, better than nothing, I suppose. We made our selections on the menu and waited while sipping on our mocktails. Since sunset was still an hour away, we ate at a leisurely pace and took our time to order the main course although it was overloaded with mushrooms which I don't mind but Sahana doesn't really care for them. Watching the sunset was a wonderful experience and we enjoyed it. We asked the waiter to take a few pics of us with the sun going down behind us. It didn't come out great but wasn't too bad either.

It was past 8pm by the time we finished dinner, so we decided to head back to Fira and try to grab a dessert there. We found a parking spot in a public parking lot in Fira that was slightly farther from our hotel than we were hoping for but we decided to park it there anyway. We walked back towards our hotel and stopped at an ice cream place called Zotos where we got a pistachio sorbet. We had tasted it on the first day in Santorini and found it to be delicious.

Then, we headed back to our hotel room to crash.

Trip to Greece - Day 9 (Sept 3, 2025)

Our first morning in Santorini was going to be a busy one. We had planned to do the famous Fira-to-Oia walk which is a little more than 10km long. The trail goes along a cliffside with dramatic views of the Aegean Sea and the caldera of a very old volcano.

Our host, Coskun, brought us our breakfast at around 8am. Breakfast was vegan pancakes with agave syrup, dakos (Greek rusks with toppings of capers, olives, cucumbers and tomatoes), toast with homemade PB & strawberry jam and lime/mint infused watermelon juice. Everything was delicious and very, very filling. Since we knew we had a strenuous day in front of us, we didn't mind stuffing ourselves before heading out. We sat out in the balcony and had breakfast and then got ready quickly.

It turned out that the narrow alley/lane that we went on the previous evening would eventually become the trail to Oia. So, we headed out of the hotel and made our way back through the narrow alleys and reached a lane that would also take people to the steps that lead down to the old port of Fira. There are two small towns we pass through on the way from Fira to Oia - Firostefani and Imerovigli. Both are very pretty, scenic towns with houses built on a hillside. Almost every house is either a hotel or an Airbnb. Some of them have infinity pools but all of them are usually guaranteed an astounding view of the caldera and the Aegean Sea. We pass through Firostefani and Imerovigli within the first 3-4 km and then it's a relatively brutal 6+km walk with no respite from the sun and difficult terrain to traverse through.

In Imerovigli, there is a fork at which we had the option of visiting a place called Skaros Rock. According to Wikipedia, Skaros Rock is a "large rock promontory" caused most likely by volcanic activity. During the trip planning phase, I had explored the possibility of hiking to Skaros Rock but gave up on that plan when I found out that it involved climbing down 300 steps, then climbing up about 200 steps on Skaros Rock and then optionally climbing down another 200 steps to a small church on the other side of Skaros Rock. And, of course, the same number of steps while returning to the Fira-Oia trail so we could resume our trek to Oia. However, when we approached the fork, we debated giving it a shot. We started the climb down the first set of 300 steps but after seeing how steep the first set of 100 steps were, I had serious misgivings about doing it because we still had 6+ km to go on the Fira-Oia trail. So, we ended up taking a few selfies with Skaros Rock in the background and headed back up to resume our trek to Oia. We would have to defer our trek to Skaros Rock to a future trip to Greece, if and when it happens.

As we left Imerovigli behind us, the trail started to become more rough. The cobblestones gave way to rough gravel, or mix of gravel and rocks. The inclines became steeper (both upwards and downwards) and there were few to no houses. On the other hand, we started getting unobstructed views of the caldera and the sea. The Aegean Sea features a very different shade of blue-green than anything we had seen before and it made for a lot of ooh and aah moments.

We had packed two bottles of water to keep us hydrated on the way and we needed every bit of it even though there was a stiff breeze blowing all the time that made it feel slightly cooler than the actual temperature (high 80s). The trail was quite busy in both directions but we were regularly being overtaken by younger people who were probably in much better physical condition than we were. In all, we took about 3.5 hrs to complete the entire trail and reached Oia at around 12:30pm. We came to a bus stop which we thought was the main Oia bus station but was actually just a local bus stop. We waved down a public bus that was actually heading towards Oia's main bus station which we realized only later. The conductor gave us our tickets but told us that we would have to get off at the main Oia bus station and get back in along with all the others that were returning to Fira from Oia. So, we got off at the bus station at Oia and had to "jump the line" there in order to board back into the bus. There were a couple of peeved-looking people but we explained that we already had our tickets and that we weren't, in fact, cutting in front of them. It was a 15-20 min ride back to the Fira bus station. From there, we walked back to our hotel room and relaxed for a couple of hours. We decided to try out the jacuzzi for a while but we found that the constant breeze made us feel uncomfortably cold, especially because the sun had now crossed over to the other side.

In the evening, we decided to visit the village/town of Pyrgos which is situated on top of a hill. We walked back to the Fira bus station and caught a bus heading to Perissa. Pyrgos was a bus stop on the way to Perissa. The Fira bus station is very similar to Majestic or KR Market bus stand (in Bengaluru) on a smaller scale but with more chaos and disorder. In Bengaluru, you can catch the attention of another person or a KSRTC staff member and ask them for the bus route number that takes you to some place but here, most of the people around us were also tourists with little to no knowledge about the bus routes and the KTEL (Santorini bus service company) staff and drivers were not very helpful in terms of telling us where to go to catch our bus going towards Perissa. Finally, somebody told us to look for bus #22 and we finally found it and boarded the bus. The roads in Santorini are almost always winding sharply and going either up or down plus they are not very wide. There are very few stretches of road that are either level and/or straight. This means that the bus drivers are exceptionally skillful at driving on these roads. These are big buses that occupy almost the entire half of a road, so it requires excellent anticipation and estimation skills to be able to navigate around bends and corners.

It was an uneventful trip to Pyrgos and we were dropped off at a quiet square from which we could see a few restaurants. We noticed one that purportedly had a good vegan menu, so we decided to have dinner there. We sat ourselves down and placed our order. While we waited for our order to arrive, I suddenly realized that I'd made an absolutely terrible blunder. But, first a bit of a back story.

Sept 3, 1988 was the day I first expressed my feelings to Sahana. So, most years, we "celebrate" the day in some small way. This year, since I knew that we would be in Santorini and that Oia is famous for its sunset views, I had picked out a restaurant (Oia Gefsis) with a vegan menu and made reservations in their rooftop section around the time of sunset.

So, back to the present. Whether it's due to an aging brain/memory or just plain forgetfulness, I had completely miscalculated the date that day. I was under the impression that it was Sept 2 and that the reservation was for the following day. It's only when we had placed our order in the restaurant in Pyrgos that I realized the big blunder I'd made. The time was around 6:40pm and our reservation in Oia Gefsis was for 6:30pm. Normally, they would hold the reservation for an extra 30 min but that was not sufficient because, even if we caught a taxi and drove to Oia, it would take longer than that. There was no way to undo the mistake so we had to live with the fact that I'd completely messed up. Sahana didn't seem to mind (she never does, does she?!) but I wanted to make amends in some way, so I reserved a table at the same restaurant for the next day (Sept 4) around the same time. I couldn't get a table on the rooftop but I thought that we could just go upstairs and sneak a peek around the time of sunset.

We finished our dinner in Pyrgos and still had some time to spare before the next bus arrived to take us back to Fira, so we decided to walk around the charming, winding, narrow lanes of Pyrgos. There is a castle on top of a hill and also a church near the top. We tried using Google Maps to make our way to the castle but it got confused among the narrow streets, so we gave up looking for it after some time. Instead, we did manage to reach the church and realized that it has a great vantage point for the sunset that was coming up soon. There were a few other people there with the same intention, so we settled ourselves down to watch the sun as it went down over the Aegean Sea. We took the obligatory selfies and other pics and then headed down to the bus stop. By then, the frequency of buses had reduced to once per hour, so we had to wait for about 40 min for the next bus back to Fira. We just sat on a bench and waited as it grew darker. But, the streets were always busy and there were always tourists walking back and forth, so we never felt unsafe or worried. In fact, as an aside, we got the impression that there is almost zero crime in Santorini.

The ride on the bus back to Fira made us realize even more how skillful the bus drivers were as they drove in near pitch darkness (there are no street lights on most of the roads in Santorini) through the winding roads. We sat in the front row of seats so we got a great view of how tight the turns were and how the driver made turns look easy when, in fact, they were exceptionally difficult,  considering the size of the vehicle and the narrowness of the road.

We arrived in Fira and walked back to our hotel room for the night.