I got to Santorini yesterday after an overnight ferry from Athens, and must say that clean sheets, a towel and a real shower on the ferry before lying on a real bed were the best that could have happened to me after over 24 hours traveling! I was told I would love Santorini and was having trouble understanding why the girl I was sharing the cabin with had given up going home, to work over the summer there… until I got there!

Santorini is totally breathtaking: a volcano rim on which houses are built, with nothing but 1000 feet cliffs of volcanic rocks and ashes! The people are also very warm and welcoming. I am staying in a little hotel in Fira, just a few hundred meters away from a view on the entire Caldera. I am looking forward to checking out the sunset that I haven’t seen yet.

My significant other and others on his research team came to shore yesterday to attend a party and it was really nice to get to hang out with him for a while. The Greek and US scientists gave a series of talks on the research that was being carried out; most in Greek so I was struggling a little to follow and we missed the sunset on the Caldera. This morning was an early one because I had to bring Cinderello back to his ship before it turned into a pumpkin so today has been a lazy day and it was really nice! For those of you worried about my spending a vacation all alone, I will be meeting him again in Athens on Tuesday and am contemplating kidnapping him then…

I will be renting a car tomorrow to go to ancient Thera. I need to educate myself a little on this trip and Akrotiri is closed since last year, so this may be my chance to combine a historic site with maybe a little beach time?

While you wait so patiently for pictures of Greece, please feel free to drop comments on this blog, I hope to catch some of you when I stop by Paris next week. In the meantime, have a great week.

Hurray! I am writing a few words from Athens where I landed a few hours ago. I wasn’t sure I would make it this far today when Logan announced a delay on the Boston-Paris flight. I thought an hour connection with a change of terminal in De Gaulle was unrealistic to begin with, so any delay on the flight would most likely mean no connection at all. I want to believe this is where luck and magic come into play but I think it’s really airline revenue. If you have 15 passengers in my situation for the exact same flight to Athens, Air France can make the flight wait most likely because it would have been a logistical nightmare to re-book us all on later overbooked flights. So they had vans ready for us at the side of the plane ready to zoom us off to the right terminal, rush us through customs, security (again) and onto the gate where passengers were still boarding!

Is Greece a hot summer vacation spot? Well, having been here a couple hours, I can feel the heat and hear more English, French and Italian in the streets than Greek, so maybe hot is the right word.

Anyhow, my time is almost up at this cyber cafe so Athena and I bid you good day.