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Santorini - 1
Oct. 5th, 2009 05:39 amWe arrived in Santorini on the ferry about 5:30pm on Thursday. The ferryboat sent our luggage down to the dock on a rolly belt and we retrieved it and went looking for our “transfer”. We found him immediately, but he moved us to the side while he looked for a couple of Japanese tourists that were also on his pickup list. After half an hour he gave up on them and we got on the little bus to take the very winding road up the side of the cliff towards the town of Fira.
Our hotel - The Pelican - is on the main vehicle street to the bus station. The road is about ten feet wide. The buses are about ten feet wide. The trash trucks and water trucks are even wider. So our little mini bus stopped all traffic while unloading us quickly in front of the hotel where we jumped quickly into the doorway before the next bus came by filling the road from side to side.
The Pelican is an older hotel and is the “business” hotel of Fira. That means it’s open all year long and is reasonably inexpensive, but not spiffed up for tourists, although certainly many tourists stay there. The first time I brought a group to Santorini, 1997, we stayed in a lovely tourist, resort hotel in Fir Stefano - a half mile or so up the ridge from Fira town. Walking up and down the cliff every day two or three times was an enormous pain, so I found a hotel - The Pelican - in the middle of town for “next time”. We’ve stayed here several times, and found the location and price make it the best place in Fira. The rooms are small white cubes with low, hard, twin beds, but the bathrooms are clean, cheerful and utilitarian (but there ARE shower curtains) and there is both wifi and air conditioning.
Juanita and Sandra, Kent and I, and David got rooms along a first floor corridor with only three steps up. Terry was delegated to the second floor and had to climb a long steep stairway to her room. But since she had been bragging about being the youngest (she SAYS she was only commenting, but it sounded like bragging) we felt this was only fair.
David arrived from the Santorini airport about two hours later and we let him have five minutes in his room before whisking him off to dinner. Now one of the best things about the old Pelican was the service laundry right next door run by the same management. This is now a pleasant and breezy plaza with a wine bar and restaurant where hotel guests get 10% off. That’s where we had dinner the first night. It was quite pricey even with the discount, and the wine and nosh were better than the main courses. But we found ourselves there many times drinking wine and eating waffles (the new greek treat) and enjoying the shade and comfy seats,.
On Friday we walked up the maze of shops in Fira town and window shopped. Fira has more and better gold work (not commercial, so much, but each jeweler making his or her own). The gold was more expensive by about 30% this time than when we were here in 2004. Probably because the price of gold itself is so much higher than five years ago. We sat in a café mid morning and drank 4 euro cokes and looked down the cliffs at the volcano and the yachts and cruise ships at the old harbor at the foot of the cliff - this is the one where you sit on a donkey and it totes you up the 587 steps to the top.
We had lunch - and dinner - at the STAMNA taverna directly across from our hotel. This was a very traditional greek taverna, with good prices and plates deliberately piled so high with food that you can’t possibly eat it all.
On Saturday we met for breakfast at 8:30 (except Terry, who was ten minutes late and David gave her six demerits) and then went over to the “New” Archaeological Museum where they have the Thera finds and frescoes. It was well laid out and the frescoes were displayed with good indirect lighting. Photos were allowed but no flash. For 30 years Athens and Santorini argued about where the frescoes should be displayed, with Athens saying they needed to be in the Archaeological museum in Athens because Santorini had no place to display them safely. Of course, when I first saw the frescoes in 1984 in the Athens museum they were in a long gallery on the second floor with OPEN WINDOWS letting in air from the worst polluted city in Europe. The museum was very enjoyable but I was faced with conundrum that not all of the frescoes are on display - the fisherman, the boxing boys, and the flotilla were missing and I can’t find anything online that tells where they are.
There were no cruise boats in on Saturday so it was quiet and much less crowded. We napped a bit, sat in the wine bar and played Scrabble a bit, and then went up to a VERY expensive bar to pay 6 Euros apiece for drinks while we sat and watched the sun set through a bank of clouds turning them to gold and rose.
Our hotel - The Pelican - is on the main vehicle street to the bus station. The road is about ten feet wide. The buses are about ten feet wide. The trash trucks and water trucks are even wider. So our little mini bus stopped all traffic while unloading us quickly in front of the hotel where we jumped quickly into the doorway before the next bus came by filling the road from side to side.
The Pelican is an older hotel and is the “business” hotel of Fira. That means it’s open all year long and is reasonably inexpensive, but not spiffed up for tourists, although certainly many tourists stay there. The first time I brought a group to Santorini, 1997, we stayed in a lovely tourist, resort hotel in Fir Stefano - a half mile or so up the ridge from Fira town. Walking up and down the cliff every day two or three times was an enormous pain, so I found a hotel - The Pelican - in the middle of town for “next time”. We’ve stayed here several times, and found the location and price make it the best place in Fira. The rooms are small white cubes with low, hard, twin beds, but the bathrooms are clean, cheerful and utilitarian (but there ARE shower curtains) and there is both wifi and air conditioning.
Juanita and Sandra, Kent and I, and David got rooms along a first floor corridor with only three steps up. Terry was delegated to the second floor and had to climb a long steep stairway to her room. But since she had been bragging about being the youngest (she SAYS she was only commenting, but it sounded like bragging) we felt this was only fair.
David arrived from the Santorini airport about two hours later and we let him have five minutes in his room before whisking him off to dinner. Now one of the best things about the old Pelican was the service laundry right next door run by the same management. This is now a pleasant and breezy plaza with a wine bar and restaurant where hotel guests get 10% off. That’s where we had dinner the first night. It was quite pricey even with the discount, and the wine and nosh were better than the main courses. But we found ourselves there many times drinking wine and eating waffles (the new greek treat) and enjoying the shade and comfy seats,.
On Friday we walked up the maze of shops in Fira town and window shopped. Fira has more and better gold work (not commercial, so much, but each jeweler making his or her own). The gold was more expensive by about 30% this time than when we were here in 2004. Probably because the price of gold itself is so much higher than five years ago. We sat in a café mid morning and drank 4 euro cokes and looked down the cliffs at the volcano and the yachts and cruise ships at the old harbor at the foot of the cliff - this is the one where you sit on a donkey and it totes you up the 587 steps to the top.
We had lunch - and dinner - at the STAMNA taverna directly across from our hotel. This was a very traditional greek taverna, with good prices and plates deliberately piled so high with food that you can’t possibly eat it all.
On Saturday we met for breakfast at 8:30 (except Terry, who was ten minutes late and David gave her six demerits) and then went over to the “New” Archaeological Museum where they have the Thera finds and frescoes. It was well laid out and the frescoes were displayed with good indirect lighting. Photos were allowed but no flash. For 30 years Athens and Santorini argued about where the frescoes should be displayed, with Athens saying they needed to be in the Archaeological museum in Athens because Santorini had no place to display them safely. Of course, when I first saw the frescoes in 1984 in the Athens museum they were in a long gallery on the second floor with OPEN WINDOWS letting in air from the worst polluted city in Europe. The museum was very enjoyable but I was faced with conundrum that not all of the frescoes are on display - the fisherman, the boxing boys, and the flotilla were missing and I can’t find anything online that tells where they are.
There were no cruise boats in on Saturday so it was quiet and much less crowded. We napped a bit, sat in the wine bar and played Scrabble a bit, and then went up to a VERY expensive bar to pay 6 Euros apiece for drinks while we sat and watched the sun set through a bank of clouds turning them to gold and rose.
