Renee:

Well we arrived into Athens and got straight onto the bus to the port, we thought we would be in a massive rush to get on the overnight fery but just made it and even had 1/2 hour to spare! It was about a 11 hr ferry ride to Santorini overnight, thank god i got about 8 hours sleep and only hada few hours to kill in the morning. Arrived into Santorini and found Perissa Beach campsite, set up tent in what we thought was a shady spot - turned out to get the afternoon sun and we were cooking that night! Once all set up headed for a pool bar near the beach and caught up with Claire, was so good to see her after being in separate countries most of the last few years! We hired a car between the three of us and set off for Thira and Oia. Made our way to a nice little vineyard near Oia, got a little bit pissed (I wasn't driving) and headed for Oia where we were meeting Ang & Matt (friends from London) for dinner & to watch the sunset. It was a pretty cosy sunset, a few hundred people i suppose! Checked out all the white washed buildings on the cliff tops and it was exactly how it looks in the postcards! Really quite dramatic scenery with the buildings perched on the cliff tops. We ended up getting ripped off by the car hire company, charging us 50 euro for damage which was honestly non-existent - felt like we got ripped off big time. Dodgy. We went out to red beach the next day, whcih was really nice swimming but a pretty tiny beach. The beaches on santorini aren't really why you go there- but the water was so warm it was so nice. Also caught up with Bex & Fity and their folks one night, got a little out of control but was all good fun! Spent 4 nights in Santorini in the end and caught the cheap (and slow) ferry onto Ios - party island!