santorini (and mykonos, i guess)

MYKONOS

start with mykonos, give it a leg up in a single way: chronology. rather talk about santorini. so: keep in mind things get better after this brief interlude.

the food was on average triple the price of the food we'd eaten in athens + about a third as good. the beaches are nice, if you're into the sort of spring break drunken dancing on your table scene, mykonos is for you.

we stayed in a small hotel called AEOLOS and they were enormously attentive and friendly. that was one of two of the highpoints of this adventure: the second: renting an ATV and riding it up and down the hills of the island. the ways to and from places constituted one of the best times i've ever had. the places themselves? there are better places.

SANTORINI

on the other hand, on every other hand: santorini (thira) was exactly what you'd want out of a greek island. santorini surrounds the volcano that birthed it, an island of volcanic rock from one of the biggest eruptions in recorded history. that volcano has since taken back some of the homeland it created… the hand that giveth covers your house in molten rock. at the red beach, for example, you can lie out on red sand under the carcasses of the homes the volcano swallowed in one of its later outbursts.

you can see the volcano from almost anywhere. when we get there, we stare out at it to excess, through a sun that sets in a kind of red i've never seen. a kind of red my camera doesn't even know how to process. we stare until the wind picks up and we realize it's time to sleep.

we sleep in a cave, humid and cold. we sleep spectacularly.

the food here is great. fresh and creative. we eat tomato fritters and mussels and octopus. we dip everything in olive oil, every place we go we drink house wine that varies between 2 bucks and five for a jug. bottles of water. bread. yogurt. i find a gyro place so good i take my last bite and order another round like it's a beer.

we rent a car and drive to red sand and black. there is no house music anywhere. fresh fish, fried cheese. we climb the mountain to pyrgos, i drive stick up a hill and surprisingly never get stuck or hit by a van. above the city there are doors on almost everything. some that seem to lead to nowhere.

at a restaurant, the owner asks me to sign a note to his daughter, to encourage her to seek out a life in art. on the back of a business card, i write: "be great". she's in the place for it.

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