well, after a school boy error of thinking the fast ferry from piraeus to santorini would not be full and it was, we then had to take an overnight ferry to santorini! which arrived at 4.30am this morning, unfortunately our hotel transport did not turn up until 7.30am because the mini bus driver was too tired to pick us up!! and the hotel would not pick up their phone!! so mei ling and i saw the sunrise over santorini island, it was the only bonus to waiting around for the transfer! after we did get to the hotel it is really nice, simple but a beauiful view from our room of the sea. the hotel owner felt that bad that they brought breakfast to our room, before we had a snooze until lunch time. this aftrernoon we have wandered around fira the main village on the island, it's a beautiful as the images in the tourist ads.

that night we took a bus with the rest of the tourists on the island to see the sunset at the village of oia, where the sunsets are amazing!!  i've seen a few good ones in my time, especially in oz, so i was a bit skeptical, but i probably took at least 50 photos.  you have to go there about an hour early to get a good spot for photoes.  then we headed back to fira for a souvalaki, which was great, but the served it with chips inside the pitta, but it was great.

the next day we took a half day boat trip to the volcano island that has made santorini famous.  it's basically a lava island, which was very weird.  i thought it was 10euros to climb the island, so i gave it a miss, but it ended up been 2 euro, but from what meil ing said i don't think i missed much. from there we went to a hot spring on the other side of the volcanic island, which is kept warm but the heat of the volcano underneath ( the volcano is still active, the last time it erupted was in 1956 (i think)).  we had time to have a swim here, the hot spring was about 40 degrees and the water is a brown colour!!! the colour is from the minerals in the water, but it reminded me of the channel water terry and i used to swim in as kids! but colour of the ocean was a great blue colour.  later in the afternoon we went to village of perissa where the beach is, well a european beach will pebbles, but it is famed, because the pebbles are black from the volcano, after a picture we left. then went back to the hotel, i had a swim in the pool and meil ing had a snooze, oh the hard life we live :)  that night was dinner at a reastaurant that the villa recommends to us (probably a cousin), but it was the best mousakka i have had!!