Welcome to the first of a series of posts about my summer holiday with Siggy in Santorini. You may find the posts slipping in and out of past and present tense. This is because they were mostly written more or less as it happened on my iPhone. Most photos featured will have also been taken on that device while a few may be from Siggy’s Canon camera.
There were queues, queues and more queues at Birmingham airport. With a three-thirty start in the morning our patience was in short supply and the airport didn’t compare well to recent experiences in Stanstead, Oslo and East Midlands.
Once we got on the plane, one of the stewards did a bit of seat reallocation to sit couples together and we ended up with an empty seat next to us. So extra leg room was afforded and meant we could catch up on a bit of sleep.
Among other places, we flew over Sarajevo, which was smaller than I expected and not just because it was 35,000 feet below us. We also flew past the little island of Skiathos. It’s probably the only Greek island I can recognise from the air. We gave it a wave on the way past; all things being well, we’ll be there for a cheeky week a bit later in the year.
Our hotel room seemed to favour form over function and, while it looked very stylish with lots of white and new Ikea-like units, there wasn’t much room for two weeks of clothing for two people. We also had an issue where the chap who helped us with our luggage opened both doors to our room and then we couldn’t shut one of them. This was quickly resolved by the maintenance man’s magic screwdriver but it added to our stress levels.
Once Siggy had oohed and ahhed at our hotel and we had unpacked a few things, we went out and explored. Perissa strikes me as very cosmopolitan with a much greater mixture of nationalities than say Kos or Skiathos. It wasn’t as warm as back in sunny England (which was having a bit of a heatwave), which was a first, and it was windy.
We walked a short distance along the beach road to Tranquilo bar and had two large Alphas and some hummus which was sadly lacking in garlic and lemon. They were playing reggae music which was almost drowned out by the noise of an annoying American talking hands free on her phone. There were lots of annoying Americans around, and annoying Russians, annoying Brits, all sorts of annoying people. Or was it just me?
Later, after a bit of a power nap, we went to Dorians, a less stylish bar on the Main Street that Siggy had seen mentioned a lot on TripAdvisor, for cheap cocktails and old hits. We had a pina colada and a blue lagoon, and the first of many servings of free peanuts with a few paprika crisps on top. The jury’s out as to whether the cocktails at Dorian’s come straight out a bottle of premix given the price, but they were nice nonetheless. And it was only 2 Euro for draught local beer (compare to 4 Euro in Tranquilo).
The chap delivering the drinks was the first person on the island to appreciate our amateur Greek. He almost seemed shocked that we were making an effort. Already we’re beginning to think that perhaps the usual clientele of this rather pricey, in Greek terms, destination are of a certain moneyed level that manners don’t necessarily feature in their everyday life and certainly don’t extend to the service sector of Santorini.
We then walked back along to the beach road and over to Locura beach bar and restaurant for some more up to date tunes – Rihanna and Beyoncé for instance – and some food. Locura is situated far down the beach road from our hotel to the point where we dared not go any further given empty stomachs and full bladders. it seemed very windy down this end and Locura quite deserted in comparison to other places. In fact, there are plenty of other places to eat and drink along the beach front as it transitions from Perissa into Perivolos, but our stomachs needed filling.
The beer at Locura is expensive at 4.50 Euro on draught. Siggy managed to force a White Russian out of the bar even though it wasn’t on the menu and the serving staff were a little confused. It was happy hour so the 9.50 price tag seemed less daunting – with us getting two for one on cocktails. We both had cheeseburgers – dangerously undercooked with squirty cheese and mild mustard.
I drank a cocktail called called Ladies made with passion fruit, amaretto and orange juice. Siggy had another White Russian (with the same amount of confusion with the middleman between us and the cocktail maker) and I had something called the Italian Job, again amaretto based. All the cocktails were freshly made, but with a lot of ice.
I’ve not seen any mosquitoes yet but that’s not to say that the one solitary mozzie on the island has already bit me and I just haven’t realized yet.
Our ‘who did this tune?’ subjects of the night were Aaliyah’s ‘Start Again’, ‘I’ve got five on it’ by Luniz and Nelly’s ‘Dilemma’ ft. Kelly Rowland, which I googled when we got back to the hotel – which has free wifi. In fact most bars in Perissa and Perivolos have free wifi, apart from Tranquilo that makes a point of telling people to ‘talk to each other’ on a sign. We would if we could hear ourselves over the hands-free chick.
Copyright notice: All photos are our property – i.e. if you copy them, you will be in breach of copyright. So don’t. But, hey, enjoy looking at them 🙂
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