Oh, what a sunset

Last sunset in Santorini (Tuesday night)

Blog Post was written on Wednesday 6 August 2014
4:10 pm Greece time
3:10 pm Italy time
9:10 am US time

Greetings from...Italy! Brad and I are currently in Italian airspace, on flight #2 of 3 for today on our way home.  To recap our final moments in Santorini:

After the superb sailing trip Monday, we had no set plans for our final full day on the island.  I had yet to do a wine tasting in Greece, so that was on my list; we wanted to visit one of the beaches of Santorini; and we had a couple small souvenirs we wanted to buy. So to accomplish all that, what did we decide to do? Why, rent a four-wheeler of course!  These things are as common as cars on the roads of Santorini and can easily bring you all over the island. For 24 hours, it only cost 40 euro and we could basically do whatever we wanted.

We started off by zipping down to the southeast side of Santorini and hitting up one of the black sand beaches.  Brad and I were both shocked at how empty that were. We were expecting decent crowds, but when we arrived at 10:30 there were still quite a lot of beach chairs vacant. The water was cooler than expected but felt pretty good since the sun was beating down. We swam a bit, napped a bit, and marveled some more at the beautiful blue of the Aegean.

After grabbing some lunch, we headed up to the more central part of the island, to some of the wine roads.  Santorini is known for their dry whites, and we tried a few that were excellent. We also sampled one of the rarer reds, which was my favorite.

In between the two winery visits, I took control of the four-wheeler and drove us up to the highest point on Santorini.  The wind was pretty strong and with no guardrails it was quite a thrill! Since Santorini is pretty narrow, you could see both the eastern and western sides of the island. Very nice!

high point of Santorini

Beautiful Aegean in the background

We realized that the best souvenir shops were up in Oia, where we had gone the first night, so we then jetted up to the northern part to find a few last minute gifts to try to squeeze into our suitcases.

Saw this cutie while in Oia

We made it back to our place in Imerovigli just before the sun was setting so we got to enjoy one last glorious sunset before dinner and packing. We had to condense our bags a bit because on the way home we wanted to avoid checking luggage due to our first flight being an Easyjet flight and having hefty baggage fees, as well as a short turn around between the EasyJet flight and Swiss Air flight where we couldn't risk waiting for baggage to be unloaded. Although I brought several pairs of shoes and clothes that I was planning on throwing away at the end, it was still very difficult to fit everything I wanted from the past five weeks into a tiny carry-on rolling suitcase and my one large handbag. I typically have more stuff for a single weekend away!

But, we made it work (although my paperback novel had to stay behind because I truly could not fit one more thing) and we made it to our second flight with 5 minutes to spare after a delayed first flight.

Landing in Milan, and then Zurich again, will mean I've come full circle on this five week journey.  As much as I enjoyed it, the time I've been here actually feels longer than five weeks. It already feels like a month or two ago that I said good-bye to Lucca. Between my time with Sarah and my time with Brad, we managed to do so much. I knew early on this year I needed some kind of adventure, and I certainly got it! So many times during this trip I had to stop, take a step back, and ask, "is this my real life?" I truly could not have asked for a better experience. My appetite for adventure is fulfilled for now, and I am excited to return home!

Final look at our Santorini home

These sneakers stayed behind in Santorini. They put on almost 150 miles of running over the five weeks and who knows how many miles of walking/hiking. 

EPILOGUE - Friday
I'm writing this from home. In some ways, it feels so good to be back, but in others, I already miss the culture of Europe.  Walking through New York City yesterday to meet up with my dad and brother (to go to the Italian Consulate so they can get THEIR citizenship), it was weird to hear so much English being spoken....and this was NYC!  I got a real shock when one of the first things I saw when I got off the subway at Columbus Circle was Grom, one of Sarah's and my favorite gelato places in Lucca (I knew it was a chain, but didn't know it had crossed the Atlantic)! How funny to see it had followed me to NYC.

Brad and I made it through our first two flights without any issue but our third and final one, from Zurich to NYC, was delayed for four hours due to operational issues with our plane and Swiss Air needing to get a whole new aircraft for us to use. Yes, it was inconvenient, but I couldn't believe how one American curmudgeon of a man complained about it the ENTIRE time we were at the Zurich airport. Things happen, and this certainly wasn't the end of the world! It's always good to keep things in perspective.

So we ended up taking off from Zurich just after 9pm, so the sun had recently set, but as we pulled up above the clouds the beautiful streaks of colorful sky appeared and we followed them...for the next FOUR hours! I've never experienced anything like that before. It was pretty cool!

Before signing off, I want to thank everyone who followed us through the blog! I never expected to have this many views in such a short time, and as a sucker for interesting statistics, I greatly enjoyed the Stats page that Blogger puts out. Take a look:

I didn't know people still used Linux??

Ciao e grazie a tutti! Huge thanks especially to my awesome travel buddies, Sarah and Brad :)