RED BEACH WHITE BEACH and Wizard Whitebeard Strikes AGAIN!

Our first full day in Santorini was a really busy day. We slept in a little and left for breakfast around 10 am. We went to this small, crepe restaurant close to our hotel that was amazing. I had a waffle with fresh strawberries, bananas, whipped cream, and milk chocolate. YUM. My mom is probably getting so mad that I am talking so much about food, but it honestly has been so good everywhere we go.  After breakfast, we decided to head to the beach. We hopped on one of the public busses which are actually really nice tour busses and settled in for the 30 minute ride. It was a great way to see the whole island. I sat with Candice, and there was this really awkward blonde girl sitting in front of us with her boyfriend who kept turning around and STARING at me. Like, not casually looking, but STARING. She was clearly listening to our whole conversation, but who could blame her? We are hilarious. So, I basically just gave her a mean look, but she wouldn’t quit staring. She was super creepy. The guy collecting the money for the bus tickets was also really dumb and couldn’t count money. Fun fact.

So, we got off at “the beach”, looked around, and quickly realized that we were not at the beach. The shore was super rocky, and there were a few restaurant s around along with two small docks. So, we decided to walk down a little to the right and all of a sudden we hear “WHITE BEACH, RED BEACH. WHITE BEACH, RED BEACH. WHITE BEACH, RED BEACH.” We couldn’t miss the short, bald man missing about 8 or 9 teeth. He was really cute though. We asked him how to get to the beach, and he said “boat. 5 euro, both way.” So, we got on the boat! It filled up pretty quickly. We took off pretty quickly and rounded the corner of the rocky shore to see the “RED BEACH”. It was actually red because of the rock surrounding it. It was pretty crowded, and the boat driver said the water was deeper at the other beach, so we waited for the “WHITE BEACH”.

We rounded the next corner, and we came across a beautiful stone beach. We were so excited to get off and sunbath until we realized that the boat would not be able to dock. We see this fat, super tan old Greek man wading out into the water. Guess what his job is? To help us off the boat in the middle of ocean! We all had our purses and our cameras, so we would start down the ladder, he would grab us around the waist and lower us into the water. We were laughing so hard. My dress was soaking wet, but luckily, none of my stuff got wet. We stumbled up on the rocks and picked some chairs to lie in. There was absolutely nothing on this small piece of land other than umbrellas and chairs. It was amazing. Of course there were other people there, but not too many.

I went into the ocean right away because it was hot, and Katie and I had to pee REALLY badly. After a while, we swam out to one of the rocks and sunbathed on it for a while. It was amazing. My legs were in the water and my body was getting more tan! Yah! It was super relaxing. We eventually swam back in and laid on our chairs .The old man who came to get us in the middle of the ocean came over to our chairs to talk to us. He brought a huge cucumber over and peeled the outer skin off and cut it up for us to share. It was delicious. Probably the best cucumber I have ever had. He didn’t speak English well, but he was so kind and welcoming. We talked a little through sign language. The boat that brought us there came back every hour, and we decided to leave after the cucumber. So, we headed back out into the ocean with our stuff above our heads, and our new friend helped us into the boat. He gave us each a little love tap on the butt as he hoisted us up which was a little odd but pretty funny.

We headed back to the bus stop and found out that we had to wait 30 minutes for the next bus. We were pretty hungry, so we decided to sit down and split a few appetizers at this little, oceanfront restaurant. The cutest little Greek woman came out to give us menus, so we definitely weren’t going to leave. She didn’t speak English, but every time she passed us, she would rub one of our shoulders in a grandmother sort of way. It was so adorable. So we split a few appetizers that included warm feta cheese, eggplant, zucchini pies, tomato pies, and hummus. It was delicious, but I ate a lot of bread. Once we were done, the bus was about to arrive, so we walked over to catch it. I took a little nap on the ride back, and we headed back t the hotel once we got there. We didn’t shower but just changed our clothes because we decided it was a good time to go ride donkeys! We walked down to the donkey station because we had found it the night before and there were a ton of old, Greek men sitting around with their donkeys. They were so cute. One of the younger ones came up to us and asked if we were interested in a donkey ride, and we obviously were. It cost 10 euro but was totally worth it. They brought up 3 donkeys at a time and they were all attached to each other. So, Nicole, Maggie, and I hopped on the first three, but I was at the back of the pack. Mounting them was a little funny. I screamed because I almost fell off which would also mean I would probably roll down the stairs, and the guy leading our donkey group who didn’t speak much English, yelled at me because I was going to scare the donkeys. Katie, Candice, and Megan got on a group of three donkeys behind us, and we set off. We stayed along a path right at the coastline, and it was beautiful. It was a really cool, traditional experience. The only problem was that my donkey was a real ass (haha). He was in a big hurry for some reason and kept running my knee into Maggie’s donkeys butt. What a jerk. And honestly, donkeys butts aren’t the cleanest things ever. It was still fun though. Going up and down the stairs was a little scary, but I figured they were experienced.

We rode them for about 25 minutes and then headed back to the hotel to shower for dinner. We hurried to get ready because we wanted to eat dinner during the sunset. We got to this restaurant that had upstairs seating and an AMAZING view of the sunset. The staff was really funny too. I had a traditional lamb dish for dinner which was really good, and some beer. YUMMY. We had a really nice dinner and got some good pictures of the sunset. After that, we walked around for a while and shopped. They had some really cute shops there. I ended up buy two dresses. :-) Everyone else wanted to keep shopping, but Maggie and I decided to have a few drinks at this happy hour. We got two drinks for 8 euro and a free shot. The free shot was basically liquefied sugar, but the drinks were really good. We met a couple from New York that was a little older than us who were traveling for a couple weeks around Europe together. It was the cutest thing ever. We also talked to the bartender who was from Bulgaria, and he gave us some good suggestions on what to do there. The rest of the group came to find us, and we all walked over to get gelato. It was getting pretty late, so we decided to head back. Candice and I searched for Waldo for a while in her Where’s Waldo book. We also discovered that he has a pal called Wizard Whitebeard which was pretty funny at the time. It was pretty hilarious. We were laughing really hard and made a bunch of jokes about sharting. Hahaha.