Santorini!

Hello! I'm writing you from the beautiful Santorini island, the furthest greek island away from Greece. I took a seven hour ferry to get here on Tuesday, and it was really enjoyable. I found myself disapointed when I arrived and am looking forward to the ferry ride back to Athens. It was just very relaxing; four friends and I spent the morning sitting in a glassed-in part of the upper deck profiting from the beautiful views of incredible cobalt blue sea and misty islands off in the distance as well as the green-house warmth of our spot just away from the wind. We spent the hours reading and they passed in a flash. We arrived in Perissa in the afternoon and got picked up from the port by a cute old greek guy named John, who took us up the winding road to his hostel. In Santorini now it's off-season, so the fifteen people in our hostel make up most of the population, but it's been really relaxing. We have found really good food for the lowest prices in Europe, become well aquainted with a 24-hour bakery, and walked to "center" (a couple of tiny super markets and a go kart track) for a whipped coffee. Today I went on a fabulous day tour with a couple of my friends. We hopped on to this pirates-of-the-caribbean-ish boat with a senior tour and enjoyed the day out on the sea. We first stopped at a beautiful volcano and had great views of the main island and the vast blues of the sea and sky from the top of the volcano. We felt a few hot steam shoots and threw around the light lava rocks. Our next stop were "hot springs." We jumped off of the boat into FREEZING cold water in order to swim to the luke warm pockets of water. By the time we made it back out to the boat, our bodies were so numb that it was actually kind of nice to be swimming around. It did take a little bit of time after the swim for the system shock to wear off as parts of my de-numbed one by one. Our next stop was Thirassia, where we took donkeys zig-zagging up the steep island cliffsides to a little village of two-hundred people. We ate the only meal offered at the only restaurant up there on a patio looking out over the ocean and the islands (gorgeous!!!!) Our last stop was Oia for the famous sunset. Unfortunately it was cloudy, so we didn't get to see the sun set, but the town was really cool. If you've ever seen the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, you might have a good idea what it looked like, because the Greek part of that book was set on Santorini island and the movie tries to capture the look of Oia.

Now I'm back in Perissa, with a little bit of sunburn, ready to say hi to our twenty-four hour bakers, and spend a night in reading! I just got to talk to my dad a little bit, and I'm ready for bed! I hope you're all doing well! Love, abbie