Today, we had more than half a day to spend on our own, with a flight to Santorini beckoning us in the evening. Since there was no rush, we decided to have a leisurely breakfast and pack all our stuff in preparation for checking out of the hotel. We had requested a late checkout so we could do some sightseeing nearby before returning to the room to check out.
We were a bit confused whether we had visited the Hagia Sophia church or not, so we went there first and realized that everything looked very familiar. A quick check in Google Photos and Google Maps confirmed that we had indeed visited the place on the first evening after reaching Thessaloniki! So, we decided to visit the Agios Dimitrios church which was close to the Roman Forum we had previously visited. After a brief stop there, we headed back to a busy marketplace called Kapani Market which we had noticed earlier in the day. This place was a bit of a mix of 8th Cross Malleswaram and Shivajinagar for those that are familiar with Bengaluru. There were a lot of roadside shops selling various types of knickknacks, food (nuts, sweets, savory snacks), clothing, souvenirs, etc but there were also several disgusting looking (and smelling) meat shops from which we had to shield our eyes (and noses) as we quickly walked past them. Overall, it wasn't anything special and we ended up not buying anything.
We returned to the room, did a final round of packing and headed down to check out of the room. We still had almost a couple of hours to kill before the car picked us up to drop us off at the airport, so we sat in the lobby and whiled away the time playing games or on social media (me) or taking a nap (Sahana).
The driver turned up at the scheduled time and took us to the airport where we checked in our suitcases and walked to the gate to wait for our flight. The aircraft that took us to Santorini was a turboprop (an ATR72-600). We were seated in Row 4, right next to the left propeller! It was really loud through the entire flight, which lasted about 60 min. The windows were extremely dirty which is a pity because I could make out some really beautiful islands as we flew towards Santorini. The descent and landing was bumpy (to say the least!) and there was loud applause when we touched down on the runway in one piece! There was no jetbridge, so we had to walk out and make our way to the terminal. As expected, the airport is very small and, dare I say, cute!
As we walked out of the terminal, we saw our driver with a sign bearing my name. He led us to a place on the sidewalk and asked us to wait while he got the car from the parking lot. The "car" turned out to a huge Mercedes Benz van with seating for 10 people! We were the only two people in it, so I'm not sure why the travel agent had ordered such a big vehicle. Anyway, the driver drove us to our hotel which is on the other (West) side of the island in a town called Fira.
We were met by our host (Coskun) from Ethos Vegan Suites in front of a nearby McDonald's because the hotel was in a narrow alley that the van would definitely not be able to get into. We went through the check-in formalities and then Coskun carried our suitcases up to our room on the 1st (or 2nd by US convention) floor. The suite itself was not too big but it featured a large balcony with seating and a private jacuzzi.
The hotel was just off the main street in Fira and it is a very, very busy road with one way traffic consisting of pedestrians, two-wheelers, quad bikes, cars, vans, bikes, scooters and any other automobile you can think of except planes and trains! Since it was still early evening, we decided to walk around for a bit and get familiar with the area. We were also feeling a bit peckish, so we went to a vegan/vegetarian restaurant called Veganissimo and had a falafel souvlaki and some pita with vegan tzatsiki. After that, we decided to take one of the many narrow lanes that branch off from the main street and do some exploring. Like in most of the other towns/cities in Greece, these narrow lanes wind up and down with stores of all kinds lining both sides. We turned on a lane started going down via wide steps. We didn't fancy climbing back up, so we stopped at a place where we could get a view of a hillside with houses lit up in the dark. The view would have been far prettier in the daytime but it was still a nice place to stop and take a few pics.
We headed back to the hotel room to get some rest before the big excursion we had planned for the next morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment