April 11, 2017
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The plan for today was to walk to Oia, the town on the northern tip of the island. The path follows the caldera for about 15 km and takes about 3 hours. Because of my tendency to sunburn, we decided to go early in the morning.📷Sunrise
📷Love me some free breakfast
As we walked through the center of town we came across a shopkeeper’s dog, Loumpis. He was very friendly and started to follow us, eventually leading us, along the path.📷📷Our trusty tour dog – Loumpis
At one point, we decided to take a slight detour to check out Skaros Rock and the church (Ekklisia Theoskepasti) that lays below it. We later found out that locals travel down to this church for Christmas day festivities. Along the way there were ruins in various states of decay, some of which you can explore.📷Skaros Rock
📷📷📷📷Don’t worry I lead you
📷Ekklisia Theoskepasti
📷Loumpis
Once we hiked back up to the main pedestrian path, Loumpis still in tow, we decided to head back towards town since there was no sign Loumpis was going to leave us. It had already been about an hour and half and we didn’t want him to follow us all the way to Oia. On our way back, we encountered another dog who promptly decided to show his dominance to Loumpis (if you know what I mean). It was at that point that Loumpis finally lost interest in us and was more concerned about his new friend. Since Loumpis was back on the main path we figured he could return home with no issue (aside from being pestered by the other dog).The path continued along the caldera, up and down, with beautiful views in every direction. Wild flowers lined the path and covered the terraced hills. The distant bright green, the chartreuse color you see in most pictures, is from the fields of daisies (or least a wild flower that looks like daisy). Churches also dotted the path, and tend to be a minimum of 500m away at any given point on the island. Many are often in ridiculous locations, such as the edge of a cliff, or only accessible by boat, that only the most devout would frequent.📷📷We can finally see Oia
Once we made it to Oia, we were both tired, hungry, and a little burnt (Ryan surprisingly more so). Our first order of business in Oia, was eating lunch. We decided on Pelekanos Restaurant. The food was delicious and the rooftop views, spectacular.📷Pelekanos Restaurant
📷Fava bean dip
📷Santorini spaghetti and eggplant sandwiches
📷Feeling refreshed after lunch, we headed down to the point of Oia, where there is a Byzantine Castle ruin and small church.📷Oia
📷More Oia
📷Byzantine Castle Ruins
📷📷📷We explored Oia for a little while longer before taking the bus back to Fira (we were definitely not going to hike back). When we got to the bus terminal in Fira, a block from our room, none other than Loumpis and his hump-happy pal were waiting for us!Tired and sweaty, we went back to our room to shower. While I napped, Ryan put out some fires at his work. The blessing and curse of working in tech, remote work.Afterwards, we went to dinner at Pelican Kipos Cafe around the corner. The restaurant has a beautiful garden eating area, but it was far too cold to eat outside. The meal was great, with the highlight being the fried cheese (at least for me). Despite being completely full, we were given a free dessert of panna cotta with local honey, that we were not about to pass up.📷Fried Naxos island cheese
📷Mushrooms in Vinsanto wine sauce
📷Seafood spaghetti, Rigatoni al Pesto, and 1 exhausted Heather
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