The Ugly-Boat Cometh!

Welcome to Santorini
Perissa beach - where I was staying. It is small black pebbles on the beach, but once you step into the water you are standing on smooth solid lava.
The famous Santorini sunset
Here I am wearing Roberto Coin!
Just amazing
There is a chance I may have bought this ring! - a small chance.

So I never went back to Ios. Apparently the ugly boat arrived just after I left. I know this because a day later my 2 roomies Simon & Tim & 2 other guys arrived at my Santorini hostel. It was great having the same familiar faces close by. Two nights before I left Ios, I went to bed early & half an hour later, 20 people bust through my door making all sorts of noise. I thought it was friends bringing the party to me because they were sorry I left early, but then I saw Simon being carried in and dumped into bed. He´d broken his foot. It had to happen to someone (I really thought it would be me because the stone steps are really hard to negotiate & if I hadn´t been wearing flat shoes the entire time I definitely would´ve done some damage). It was really quite funny because he´d fallen really far away from our hostel & here was this 6foot giant being carried in by 2 shorties. And the funniest part was that in all the commotion, someone had carried his broken havaiana thong home too! Out of all the things to be worried about, it just seemed mad that someone had bothered. - All over Ios there are single shoes scattered across the footpaths - where people have fallen, and lost their shoe. I can imagine if there was a lost property or something, there´d be a thousand shoes to choose from. So the mission for the next day was to find a matching thong! It was no wonder they´d fled to Santorini now.... it is the place where everyone from Ios goes to recover before leaving Greece!

Santorini has some of the best gold jewellry in the world. Some of the pieces were amazing. I was hanging out at this particular shop where I´d made friends with the girl that works there & for the hours that I´d just sit around chatting they let me wear some of the most breath-taking diamond & precious stone jewellry. And they photographed me with it on! It was great. Every so often I´d put on another elaborate piece ie, diamond mega-bracelet worth €30,000! and matching ring! And I´d just sit their with my glass of wine (or espresso) and enjoy the sunsets (the shop was right on the rocky coastline). I happened to go into another shop where they knew Anastacia (the nice doctor) from RCH neonate dept.

It was really nice being back in Athens again. The hostel I stayed at was really great and in an area I was familiar with from my first visit. There were 2 girls in my room that I´d sat with on the ferry to Santorini so that was a nice suprise. I spent the day at the Archeological Museum which is full of ancient treasures that they found at excavation sites. It was truly amazing (I took lots of photos!)