Now THIS is Santorini.

I have to admit, my image of Santorini was based pretty solely on The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. White houses, blue roofs and donkeys.

Well, Thursday I was in that movie.

Caitlin joined Erika, Yelena and Kelsey for a morning at the beach. The rest of us headed to Fira. I had asked Poppy at the front desk where we should ride donkeys and where we could get tickets for a boat ride Friday. The answer for both: Blue Star Ferries.

Since we took a plane there, we didn't really get to see the sea. Most people take a ferry to the islands, but a plane saved us about three hours and didn't cost that much more. However, when locals in Athens and Santorini heard that we weren't going on the ferry, they urged us to at least take a boat ride. 

We parked our ATVs at the rental place, and walked up the hill to Blue Star. They told us where the donkeys were, but unfortunately they didn't have any boat rides available for Friday. Thankfully, a woman down the counter told us to wait a second and called another agency. We were in luck! We could buy tickets down the block for an 11 a.m. boat on Friday.

I made a mental note of the place, wanting to wait until the other girls were there so we could decide how many tickets we needed. And it was off to see the donkeys!

We walked through rows of shops trying to find donkeys. We weren't sure if we were in the right place until a short man wearing a blue cap looked at us and simply said, "donkey?"

"Yes! Donkey! Donkey!"

"Five down."

We all started getting our money together, but I remembered Poppy recommending we only go up the hill. She said down is significantly scarier, and the donkeys tend to slip more. I asked if we could just go up, but he didn't understand. He just kept telling us we could go down and up for €15.

We gave up and handed him money for the ride down. But we still hadn't seen any donkeys.

We followed him around the corner to see them lined up along the path. 

We walked toward them, and he literally started throwing us on top of donkeys. He'd just point, let us put one foot in, then he'd take care of the rest. Bethany, Kate and Amy disappeared around the first corner as Jessica and I were getting situated. He tied three donkeys together in a row — Jessica, me and  a donkey without a rider — and started leading us down the path without a word.

I don't know what I was expecting out of the ride; I just new it was a must-do if I was in Santorini. I'll say this much: it was an experience. As soon as we rounded the first bend, I started getting nervous. To my left was a short ledge and beyond it? I had no idea. But I knew it would be an unpleasant drop. We traversed back and forth and I shifted from left to right as to not look at or be anywhere near that ledge. 

I was jarred forward every time my donkey missed a step or slipped on the path. Every jolt only terrified me more. I could jump off a cliff in Switzerland without a care in the world but a 15-minute donkey ride was horrific. It still makes no sense to me.

My entire body was tense, and I tried unsuccessfully to think of something other than donkeys. As I bounced down behind Jessica, I started to feel bad for the animals. How sad would it be if your sole purpose in life was to haul humans up and down a steep, winding path purely for their entertainment?

We eventually reached the bottom, and I started to relax as soon as I hopped off. I saw the donkeys feeding in a small patch of grass, and a few of them were meandering up and down on their own. They didn't seem terribly unhappy. And we made it down safe and sound. All right. That wasn't the worse thing in the world, I thought to myself.

No. No it wasn't. Getting back up was.

I knew going into the donkey ride I was likely allergic to them. I'm allergic to just about anything with four legs and fur, but I figured I'd just get some puffy eyes and a runny nose, which I can handle. I spend most of the year rocking that look. It turns out my allergic reaction to donkeys is similar to that of cats: a no-holds-barred attack on my lungs.

My throat started to swell as I walked back up the path. I had to stop way too often to catch my breath. The rest of the girls were at the top for at least 15 minutes before I joined them, panting as if I had just ran a marathon. It didn't help that the only way up was polluted with donkey cooties (a very scientific term). I sat for a few minutes in silence before we move on. It still took me half the day to regain a normal breathing pattern.

It was an experience.

We walked around for a little bit and took some pictures. I absolutely love how blue and white everything is. I felt like water and paint were competing for "prettiest blue." They tied.

We worked our way back toward the ATV place. When we first arrived there Wednesday, they recommended a restaurant next door. We decided to try out their rooftop garden for lunch. It was more of a porch, and it was really quite cold, but we pretended it wasn't and enjoyed our meal.

I'm not sure why, but I ended up getting pasta. I wasn't ready for Italian food again and pushed it around on my plate until it was cold. But hey, I'm in Greece. No complaining.

I feel like after every meal in Greece we got something free. Usually it was dessert, but here we got free shots of Ouzo. I think Amy was the only one to take hers. We paid and left to meet the rest of the girls.

They grabbed gyros at a small shop while we pooled money to buy six tickets for the boat Friday.

We got ourselves organized, I asked for directions and we were off to Oia!

We drove along a long curvy road that hugged the base of two mountains. Some of the sharper turns made me nervous. If I took them too hard I feared I would be plummeting toward the vast sea that stretched to the horizon to our right. I figured we'd end up in there one way or the other. If it wasn't my driving, the wind would just lift us up and drop us into the water. 

I spotted a nice place to pull over and take some pictures. I watched as four ATVs pulled in behind me. We felt like a gang. It's funny because leading the group, I felt like such a badass speeding along. With no one in front of me, I can't see what we look like. But I know from how much I laughed at Mario Kart Jess and Kate.

It was time for a group picture. Nine girls. Five ATVs. One fantastically hilarious frame-worthy picture.

We kept going, but eventually reached Oia! When someone mentions Santorini, this is the town that immediately comes to mind. It's iconic.

As soon as we saw civilization and enough space to park all five vehicles, we hopped off and practically ran to see the view.

I wouldn't mind having that swimming pool/hottub

The water looked painted. We sat around there for a while and made friends with a cat. But we soon decided we hadn't quite made it to the heart of the city.

We drove another few minutes, walked up a small hill and walked into the setting for "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants."

We explored for a while. The streets were so narrow, but I could probably count on one hand how many people we passed at this point. I know we had a very different experience in Santorini because it was off-season, I think there was something magical about having the place practically to ourselves. I can't imagine pushing through crowds here. It would be a nightmare.

I bought some more souvenirs — I definitely went knickknack happy in Greece. I also bought some worry beads made from volcanic stone.  It's a string of beads used to pass time and relieve stress. The idea is to keep the fingers and hands occupied when one is anxious or worried. There isn't any religious or ceremonial purpose — it's just to relax. Being a naturally fidgety person, I thought they would be perfect for me.
I asked the woman who sold me the beads where we should go for the sunset. She said although everyone usually goes to the windmill, she recommends the castle. So to the castle we went. The view was surreal.

We were sitting around enjoying our solitude when a couple of dogs came bounding down the stairs. A couple of American girls followed them. 

Kate and Maximus

They told us the dogs had been following them around for a while. Turns out they liked us better, because when we left shortly after to walk around some more, the dogs trotted up the stairs behind us, tails wagging.

We were supposed to meet Jess and Kate at the windmill. I'm not sure what they went off looking for, but we sat there with our new dogs for a while. Eventually we got tired of waiting, and we started walking. I got one of the dogs, who we named Maximus, got a little too excited as a ran off and he jumped up and bit my hand. It wasn't too hard or anything, but I was startled.

The dogs led us to an old abandoned home. We decided it must be where they live.

They weaved through the empty streets with us as we half-heartedly looked for Jess and Kate. We weren't really concerned. We stopped to buy some souvenirs. I found a little turtle figurine to buy. I have quite the collection of them at home. I'm surprised I haven't tried to find more until then.
Just as I was getting used to having the place practically to ourselves, I rounded the corner and faced a wall of people. Erika told me it was their Bus2Alps travel-mates they're oh so fond of.
In the three minutes it took me to push through them I was already annoyed with their topics. It felt like I walked into a crappy MTV reality show. "She said what?!?" "Nice, brah!" "Greeks are so gay."
What? I told Erika I sympathized with her for being surrounded with these idiots a little too loud, and we ran off — and right into Kate and Jess.
Reunited, we looped back around to the castle. The Bus2Alps crew had beat us there, but we still found places to sit and watch the sunset. I listened to the ridiculous conversations around me and watched the city and sky change colors together.

We left right before the sun slipped into the sea to beat the crowd out of there, and walked back in fading light to a restaurant where we had made reservations earlier.

We had lost one of our dogs to the crowds, but Maximus was surprisingly still with us. He followed us into the restaurant and out onto the patio overlooking the city where we ate. He curled up under our table by Kate's feet and ate the scraps we gave him.

The chef came out to talk to us. He ran his finger down the menu explaining what each dish was and which ones he had run out of. It was really helpful. He mentioned some sort of egg dish that Erika and I had settled on splitting, but when I ordered he said it was only for breakfast. I was confused as to why he even brought it up, but whatever. I moved onto option two: spaghetti with pesto. He's out. 

Panicked, I ordered some sort of warm spinach and feta salad and handed back my menu. Then Kelsey ordered spaghetti. Turns out he was out of pesto, not the pasta. I misheard him.

I was disappointed until I took my first bite:

I wish I paid more attention to the name so I could figure out how to recreate this masterpiece. It was one of the best foods I had in Greece if not in Europe. Yum. Yum. Yum.

As usual, we got free dessert: warm brownie bites. We devoured them, paid and walked to the ATVs. I started handing people their helmets and pushing the ATVs to get them facing the right direction. Then I realized Jess, Kate, Bethany and Caitlin were nowhere to be seen. I had no idea where they could have gone. Amy and Erika went to look for them while Yelena, Kelsey and I watched Maximus chase cars away from us. He was so protective. When Erika and Amy came back empty handed, I ran back up the hill with the two of them to help look. The dark narrow streets were completely empty. Not knowing what else to do, we yelled their names a couple of times but were only answered with echoes of our own voices. We gave up and walked back down to where we parked — only to find them there with Maximus still chasing down anything that moved near us. When a dog in a nearby yard started barking at Bethany, Maximus took personal offense and barked ferociously at him until he cowered back into his corner. If that's not loyalty I don't know what is. We made an impression on this dog — and he on us. We were sad to leave him, but we had to.

We donned our helmets and started up our ATVs. I led the way out, or at least I thought I would. Maximus took charge of that one. He bolted in front of us, running through the streets and blazing a trail. At first it was adorable. He was leading us to the edge of town! But then he kept going, and it got sad. I told Erika, who was four-wheeler companion clutching me to try to keep us both warm in the wind, that I felt like we were abandoning our child. He was so determined. He just kept running. When he started to lose energy, he ran next to us. Just when I thought we'd pass him, he darted in front of my ATV and slowed to a walk, forcing me to slow drastically. He was damn smart. This continued for a while. When I thought we really passed him, I'd hear Erika yell, "He's got a second wind!" "And a third!" "Holy crap, here comes his forth wind." "Again? Seriously, dog?"

But eventually he disappeared behind us. We were both near tears. He pulled the same run and walk game with the next three ATVs. He had been running with us for about 15-20 minutes when he got to Jess and Kate, who pulled up the rear of our gang.

Apparently he walked in front of them and stopped still, panting harder than they've ever seen a dog pant. He looked up at them with the saddest eyes, the definition of puppy eyes, before sauntering to the side of the road and letting them pass.

I'm not a dog person by any means, largely due to my aforementioned allergies, but if I could, I would have found a way to bring him with us. I still feel like he's our dog.

We dropped off Erika, Yelena and Kelsey at their hotel and headed back to ours. When we arrived, Jess and Kate were crying. They told us what Maximus had done at the end.

I went to sleep hoping he found his way back to his home.

We love you, Maximus

We run this island.

As much as I had loved Tuesday, I felt like we didn't get to see much. So we decided to rent ATVs for a couple of days. We talked to Poppy at the front desk, and she called a rental company. A man came to pick us up. He took Kate, Bethany and me first, and dropped us off at the shop in Fira. Another man in red overalls came out to give us lessons but mostly to mock us while the other man drove back to get everyone else. He asked if any of us had ever drive a four-wheeler. Bethany answered with a yes. He smirked and led us over to the ATVs. He started quizzing her on her expertise, but she had only ridden a couple of times. He concluded that she was lying, and to teach us our lesson, he just waved his hand at a four-wheeler and let each of us figure out how to work it for a test drive up and down the street. He laughed as none of us could turn the vehicle around at the end of the narrow alleyway.

But apparently it was good enough, because when the rest of the girls showed up, they handed us helmets and three sets of keys.  We wanted to get a couple of vespas too, but you need a scooter license to ride them in Greece. =[

So we paired up and paid for three scooters for two days. It broke down to €15 each — an unbelievable deal. Caitlin hopped on the back of mine, and we started our adventure.

First we went back to the black sand beach in hopes of finding a chocolate shop that Bethany had read about. Thinking something would be open there was obviously blind faith, but we tried anyway.

With no success, we moved on to Pyrgos, where Bethany also had the name of a restaurant to try. 

The drive was absolutely beautiful. Caitlin and I started cheering on our yellow ATV as it chugged up the hills to Pygros. "Come on, Squirt. You've got this! Go, Squirt, go!!" He now had a name — and a gender. We also started yelling "banana walnut" in a British accent, because it was just completely necessary.

We reached Pygros, parked our go-carts (as I began thinking of them) and started walking around the town. Just like Kamari, nearly everything was closed. An employee at a small convenient store told us the restaurant we were looking for was closed, and the small cafe across the street was only serving coffee. We went back to the convenient store and with a couple of English words and a lot of hand gestures, they directed us to Mythos Grill House down the road. It too looked closed, but someone ushered us inside and we sat at a table overlooking the island.

Photo taken from Caitlin's blog

We ordered two plates of tomato doughnuts, which we had heard was a must-have while in Santorini. They were basically deep fried tomatoes, but I really liked them. Most of the girls weren't to crazy about them. I think Kate spit hers out. More for me!

Amy and I split an order of cheese pies and I got eggplant dip. I thought the dip would come with bread, but it was supposed to be for the bread they gave us when we sat down. By the time I got my food, we had already hungrily scarfed down almost all of the bread. So I resorted to putting it on all the other food I had. It was still pretty good. It was so nice to be trying new food that wasn't in the pasta family.

After we ate, they gave us complimentary dessert. It was this weird gelatinous square cut into cubes. The texture was definitely weird, but other than that I really liked it, as did Amy. Everyone else just made faces. Kate tried to swallow hers whole like pills until she didn't have water. "I don't do weird food."

After lunch, Caitlin took the wheel for a while. I loved driving, so I was a little sad to give it up. But it turns out the ride is just as fantastic as a passenger. Without having to focus on the road, I saw so much more.

We continued in the direction we hoped was the red beach. We weren't terribly concerned with our destination, though, because the ride was so pretty. We just kept heading south.

We pulled over to take some pictures. I swear I spent my spring break in a post card. Perhaps a painting. But it's hard to believe this place is real. It's a paradise.

Our helmets made us look awfully ridiculous for as cool as riding the ATVs made us feel.

We drove some more, following our navigators Kate and Jess. They were following signs for the red beach, when suddenly one directed them down a dirt path to our left. We bumped along the curves of the path through our own dust clouds. We passed a couple of donkeys and followed more signs supposedly directing us to the red beach. 

Suddenly the path dropped steeply. I watched Jess and Kate disappear down the hill on their little mario kart. I still can't get over how much they looked like they belonged in the video game with their red ATV and white mushroom helmets.

Caitlin and I followed them to the bottom of the hill. We looked around the corner and still saw no sign of a beach. Just more dangerously sloped hills. We waved for Amy and Bethany to not follow us down there and decided it would be best to turn around and find a paved path to the beach. We didn't want to risk not being able to get back to the top. 

Throttle squeezed tightly, Caitlin and Squirt got us back to the top without a problem.

Photo courtesy of Amy

Kate and Jess followed shortly. We got back to the main road and kept heading south. We just kept going until we reached the very tip of the island. The road ended at a small dirt path and a lighthouse. As we hopped off and removed our helmets, we could see a couple emerging from the path. Caitlin turned to me and said wouldn't it be funny if that was Melanie and Simon (the Canadian couple we had met in Athens)? We knew they were coming to Santorini next, but what were the odds?

Pretty good I guess because low and behold, up walks Melanie and Simon. They're both in between jobs, so they decided to do a three-month tour of Europe. 19 countries. 25 cities. I found myself getting jealous, despite the fact that I'm studying abroad.

They said they were really enjoying Santorini, but were on to their next pitstop: Romania. We said our goodbyes again, and walked around the lighthouse on the path.

We rounded the corner and climbed up some rocks. We sat on the top of a cliff. Words can't capture this. I guarantee it.

I was sitting without a care in the world, not paying attention to anyone, when all of the sudden I heard Kate yell. I had seen her walk away a few minutes earlier, but I didn't think anything of it. We looked around and there she was — walking on the next cliff down, yelling for Jessica to take her picture.

I didn't even realize we could get to that cliff. It didn't look attached. Of course as soon as I took a picture of her I was getting up to explore too. Jessica, Bethany and I went down to the cliff, but Kate was nowhere to be found. We kept yelling her name and started to even get worried, but no response.
I turned to Jess and said, "you call her." I guess she only has ears for Jess, because after one shout of her name, Kate replied.

We got to the edge of the cliff she was on before and saw that there was another one below we couldn't see from up by the lighthouse. She was climbing her way down that one. I had no idea Kate was so much of an adventurer. She just kept climbing.
Jessica and I kept following her. Every time we got to where we last saw her, we found a new cliff a little lower down. The lighthouse kept getting smaller and began to disappear behind the cliffs the lower we got until it eventually disappeared all together.

Eventually we caught up to Kate, who was sitting on her "mermaid chair." There was a rock perfectly shaped into a chair. Kate decided it's where the mermaids sat. It only had one arm because the other side was for their fin. Couldn't argue with that logic.

We sat together for a few minutes, but I wanted to head back up. I knew there was no way the other three girls could see us, and we certainly couldn't hear them. I felt bad leaving them when we still wanted to find the red beach!

We climbed back up to meet them, then rounded the lighthouse and found some more rocks to climb. Kate is a monkey. Before I knew it, she was climbing another rock.

I can't really blame her though. I love climbing and nothing beat that view. Nothing.

Eventually we coaxed Kate down from her perch, and I reluctantly followed. We got back on our ATVs once more and retraced our path back to where we were before, hoping to pass the red beach.
Caitlin and I were last in line, and I thought I saw a sign for it. So I spent 10 minutes honking and waving trying to get their attention, but little Squirt just couldn't keep up with the other two. I eventually got them to turn around so we could go back to the red beach... only to find out that I had seen a sign for the same dirt path we went down before. Oops.

We tried down the next path and parked in a small lot. There was a man walking his dog nearby. We tried to communicate with him to ask him where the heck we needed to go, but he spoke very little English. All we got out of it was that we weren't in the right spot, but we should go right back on the main road. And so we did. And we followed more red beach signs through another maze of streets. We reached the coast and saw no red, so we cut our losses and decided to head home. We raced along the streets as the sky turned pink. Caitlin was driving and Squirt actually pulled ahead of Mario Kart, but the lead was brief and Jess and Kate won. I don't think Bethany and Amy ever knew we were racing.
When we got back to Karterados, we ran to the grocery store. I needed more greek yogurt. It was seriously the best yogurt I've had in my life. I miss it.
We had dinner at home before Bethany, Caitlin, Amy and I drove into town in the dark. Erika, Yelena and Kelsey had arrived in Santorini that day with their Bus2Alps group. They were staying in Fira and we were supposed to pick them up on our ATVs around 8 p.m.
We had an hour to kill, so the four of us walked around through a few shops and figured out where their hotel was. We drove Bethany home real quick so we would have enough room to pick up all three of our CCI sisters.
Amy, Caitlin and I sat on the steps of their hotel for a while before they finally emerged. Erika ran and jumped on me, nearly knocking me over with her hug. Everyone joined the embrace as other people at the hotel, likely Bus2Alps travelers looked on in confusion.
We tossed them helmets, and we rode off into the night. The girls were getting very sick of their travel-mates, so they were thrilled not only to escape them, but also to look so cool doing so on the back of four-wheelers. We were their personal escorts — their knights in shining armor.
They came back to the hotel room and the nine of us talked about our Greek adventures. Caitlin, Bethany and Amy tried Ouzo, a typical Greek "Apéritifs." Caitlin and Bethany coughed and sputtered, practically gagging. Amy downed her shot, looked quizzical, shrugged her shoulders and declared she liked it. Jessica and Kate had some sort of mixed drink that they made too strong or too gross, and they passed it to Amy, who liked that one too. Before we knew it, they had accidentally gotten Amy a little tipsy. She started climbing over beds and jumping from one to another. Suffice to say we were entertained.
After a couple of hours, Bethany, Caitlin and I took the girls back to their hotel.
It was so great to see them. It's hard to see how much of a family we become while we're in Florence, but I really felt it then. I didn't expect to miss them so much after less than a week, but I did. We all did.
And we had a couple more days of exploring with them before Bus2Alps took them elsewhere.
By the time we got back, I was exhausted. Bedtime!

Another perfect day.