Sep 2004

Most of this day was spent hanging around at the beach in Vlihada. The reason that this was chosen was because it is home of the Santorini Submarine. Heather and I decided to take a ride on this, along with some of my family and Col.

The submarine tour started at a secluded port and chugged to open waters before descending. While underwater, we were "treated" to a 15th century sunken wreck of a small boat (complete with drive shaft), a couple of ancient containers and an Ionic column that was about 3 feet tall (obviously from a temple for midgets).
You can probably tell, that I thought that part of the ride was slightly touristy. However, the experience of submerging was quite surreal, and I naturally played the role of a tacky tourist well, by videoing everything. For future reference, if filming underwater, switch off the auto-exposure on your camera and adjust it manually - it allows you to see the underwater environment much more clearly (you may want to turn off auto-focussing as well).

After the spending the day at the beach, we headed off to Ia. Ia is supposed to be the place to watch a sunset from in Santorini and as we got there, it was obvious that a lot of people knew this, as the place was heaving with tourists. Heather, Hazel, Mike and I found a spot reasonably high up the caldera and watched the sunset. Although nice to look at, it was pretty similar to the one that we experienced at hotel, so it was slightly disappointing in that regard.

However, there was a slightly surreal experience, as most of the tourists around us applauded when the sun went down. Now, I am all for giving praise where it is due, but this is something that happens daily and (unless the Santorini local government knows something that rest of the planet does not) is a natural event with no human involvement. The question still remains though: "who were the crowd applauding?". I have been thinking about it and come up with the following:

• Someone was bungie-jumping off the edge of the caldera, and we did not see it
  
• The blokes were pleased that they could now get to a bar and sink a few Mythos
  
• There was a sweepstake running as to how far down the sun would go, and someone guessed "below the sky" correctly
  

After sun down, we called Col and he joined us for dinner, having received excellent directions from me ("we are in a restaurant overlooking the caldera" - this meant he only had to search about 30 instead of 35). Later on in the evening, my mum and dad joined us for dinner as well, which rounded off a pleasant evening. Again, they got fantastic directions from me ("we're near a church" - every town in Santorini has at least half a dozen, probably more).

Must remember to applaud the sunrise in the morning...

This was day was pretty hectic for us. It started with one of my mates (Col) arriving at around 6am. If he had chosen a more appropriate time to arrive, we would have met him at the airport- but he lucked out in that regard (sleep takes precedence, I'm afraid).

Around 10am or so, Mike and Hazel arrived - so we met them at the airport. On the same flight (and to our suprise) were our friends Neil & Liz, whom had flown from London to Athens, before catching a Greek domestic flight to Santorini. It was great to see Neil & Liz, as we had not seen them in somewhile, so we decided to arrange for us to meet up for dinner that evening. Col received an alarm call from me as well to see if he was in for it.
Heather and I ducked into one of the bars in Fira called Tropical, where we met the owner Jeannie to discuss booking it out for my 3rd stag night. Tropical is very popular with travellers to hang out in, along with the mandatory Irish bar (that every town seems to have).

Later that day, my entire family (16 people) arrived on a direct flight from Gatwick. We considered meeting them at the airport, but decided against it and opted to meet them at their hotel instead which was in Perivolos. Seeing them after 18 months apart was fantastic and hopefully they felt the same - there seemed to be an awful lot of comments about my weight (damn double-chin, although it's not all bad if I had lived in Victorian times).

After hanging around the pool with my family, Heather and I headed off to Fira to meet up with Haze & Mike, Neil & Liz and Col at another bar in Fira to watch the sun set. Then it was off to dinner at a restaurant called Nassau, which claimed to do the best moussaka in Fira.

The Sunday after we arrived was spent with our wedding planner, Tania, at our wedding and reception venue. It was nice to put a name to a face, as I had been chatting with Tania over the last few months in an attempt to sort out the wedding documentation. When Heather and I left Sydney on the Thursday, there was no real certainty that we will be able to get married due to problems with the documentation. No, I was not incredibly inefficient; I had problems with a certain Australian DFAT office. I may put it into a blog post at some time (if anyone shows any interest)...

Anyway, we met at our hotel and we were driven to the venue. We had seen photos from the venue, sent to us by Tania, so we thought we knew what to expect. Like the rest of Santorini however, the beauty of it can never be properly portrayed either on photos or video. It was (to use an overused word) awesome, with spectacular views of the caldera.

During this visit, we met the owner of the winery and had a finger of one of the desert wines that they make - very pleasant.

During this meeting with Tania, we dicussed final arrangements and she was able to confirm that the Certificate of No Impediment we needed from DFAT had been received. Woo hoo!!! We can get married...

The first full day in Santorini was spent shopping for gifts for all our guests. Although it is traditional for all the lady guests to receive a bonbonierre, we made two decisions:

• Sugared almonds would get all sticky in the heat
  
• Blokes should not be excluded, because they had travelled to Santorini as well.
  

So we ran around like mad picking up various tacky souvenirs. Unfortunately, this took most of the day, so we headed back to our hotel again.

At the end of the watching the sunset on the previous day, I decided that I wanted to do something a bit interesting. So when we returned to the hotel, I set up my tripod and video camera on the balcony and you used the time-lapse facility to film the sunset. Every 5 seconds or so (it varied due to alcohol consumption and chatting to Heather) I took a single frame shot. The result is that the 2-3 hour sunset completes in about a minute and a half. Maybe these guys will be interested in seeing it...

The day had arrived for our flight to Santorini; arrival time at Sydney airport was 12 midday, and we were kindly given a lift there by Mike, who was going to be best man at our wedding.

The flight route was Sydney to Bangkok - Bangkok to Zurich - Zurich to Athens and Athens to Santorini. Accompanying us as far as Athens was Heather's mum (and my soon to be mother-in-law), Doris.

The leg from Sydney to Bangkok was British Airways and was packed, as always. As we checked in early, we had a row of 3 seats to ourselves but even so, my shoulders were hanging over the side of the seat into the aisle. Total flying time for this flight was about 10 hours, total sleep: 0 hours.

From Bangkok to Zurich we flew Swissair long haul and although the plane was not full, I still managed to have my shoulders hanging over into the aisle (some space would have been nice...). Total flight time: 12 hours, total sleep: 1 hour approximately (although Heather may dispute that figure!)

The Zurich to Athens leg was also Swissair, except whenever you wanted something it was chargeable (unlike on long haul). Still, by this point I was downing alcohol as if I was about to spend a month in the Middle East, so a little thing like money was not going to stop me. Total flight time, 3 hours, total sleep: 0 hours.

The final leg was on a smally turboprop Olympic Airlines airplane and was pretty packed (with locals). Fortunately, it was a short trip of 45 minutes or so.

Total flying time was just under 26 hours, although by the time you add the time that we hung around airports, it was more like 35 hours. Total sleep was about 1 hour, and I am not too sure of the number of alcholic units consumed

Anyway, on landing at Thira, we were relieved to see that our suitcases had made it as well (fortunate, as they contained not only our holiday clothes, but our wedding clothes as well). It's pleasing to know that checking through baggage does tend to work properly. We picked up our hire car, which blended in nicely with local cars because it looked as if it had not been cleaned in its life and had some minor damage (loose trim, broken wing mirror, etc.)

We drove straight to our hotel, and caught some much needed sleep. Fortunately, we woke up before sunset and saw our first Santorini sunset - a very romantic end to the plane ride from hell.

More to come later...