Day 31 1/10/2018

The wine tour and the walkathon

Today’s plan was simple breakfast, laze around, wine tour and then discover where the sea jet ticket office was to get our next ticket for the ferry to Crete, then find the place that was suppose to pick us up.

The began at 11.30 am. Right on the hotel transport was there , 20 minutes were a the front of winery, its name was Estate Argyros Santorini, the number one producer of wine on the Island. We are greeted then taken on a short but interesting tour of the vines. Here we learn that they don’t grow grapes like anything we thought we knew , they grow there grape vines the ground and each year they train them to grow into at bird nest construction. The ground is all volcanic and so they believe this is what keeps the vines disease free.

Now in and tastes this wine. The first wine, a white ,was crisp, with minerals tastes to it, the second was also a white ,a bit more age on the vine ,and this was buttery, not as crisp, could be called a Chardonnay in Australia. The red was next , a wine that was a cross between a merlot and a pin noir ,light but has what it takes Toto be enjoyed with steak ,or bar- b- que meats. Finally we tried two stickies that were age , a 4 and then a 12 year , both were good but the 12 took the gold .

That ended the tasting ,we brought a couple and went out to the car as arrange, no car, we wait ,no car. I go back inside ask if they would ring our hotel , by now half an hour had passed. Eventually a bus from the hotel which had been at the airport stop in to get us, and all in the world was right once more, nearly an hour after the schedule pickup.

We dropped off our bounty , decide that the day is so beautiful that we walk the 4.5 ks to Firva and get the tickets for the ferry ,all down hill. All was good till I thought I saw a short cut between to hotels. I say to Shirley we just climb this fence and we’ll save some time, over we go all seems good until the end, there is no easy way .From here on in was take the form of mountain goats as we scramble over to walls to get out of the parking lots of the two hotels. Back on the road again as the song goes, we make it to town and now the search for the Seajet ticket office begins. We new we had seen it the night before but where, the top the hill no down near the post office, I was convinced, the top of the hill , wrong, the post office is the winner. Ticket collect onward to our next objective, pickup to the ferry. We now to catch a bus to Oia ,sounds like ear, the bus station was just up the road . On the bus we squashed in like sardines ,it stinking hot ,and we are stuck like this for at least 25 minutes, relief when the bus stops. We stop right outside the ticket place we were going to be looking for, now that’s what I call luck. All fixed ,pickup at 3.30 pm tomorrow, now let’s explore. This town is the one with the blue roofs but there only on churches and in this town there is a church on every corner ( joking),we get few pictures complete our tradition and then we are overrun by the boat people ( big ship tourist) so we decide hightail it out of there. We bus it back to Firva watch the sunset absolutely beautiful. Let’s eat , we find this Greek restaurant and the food is fantastic, not to expensive, friendly , perfect for what we want, I have stuff Squid, Shirley had grilled prawns.we are so full we walk home and we are exhausted by the time we get there, its been a full on day.

So tomorrow we leave Santorini at 5 p.m ,we going out for lunch so that’s it for today.

Love you all , look after each other,

Shirley and John.