The previous night I tossed and turned, gave up, got out of bed and went to the lobby with my tablet, read the Times, posted on Facebook, read my e-mail. Finally at 2AM Ireturned to bed, tossed and turned for perhaps another hour and finally dozed off only to feel like I'd been run over by a bulldozer when the alarm went off at 7:45.
We ate breakfast at the hotel and set off for an organized tour of the island. We were bussed first to the archaeological site where a Minoan village was buried under 40 feet of volcanic ash in the seventeenth century BC. It was fascinating. Four story buildings, sewage systems, pottery, stores, frescos, all presented by a guide who knew her stuff. She taught the kids about linear A (an as yet undeciphered writing system) and I later challenged Joshua to figure out how Linear B was deciphered. He figured it out in a few minutes with a few leading questions from me.
We also visited a traditional Greek village (but it was a superficial walk-through), a red sand beach, a black sand beach (where we ate lunch), a winery (where we got another superficial walk-through and tasted 3 Santorini wines). Finally, we went Oio (pronounced EE-Oh) where we walked through one of the most picturesque towns ever built, ate a fine Greek meal, watched the sunset, and bought nuts. I also finally managed to buy a replacement memory card for my camera. I loaned Joshua the nicer camera for this trip, which he packed without the memory card, so I took the memory card out of mine and have been without a camera form the second day until now.
There was a Saudi couple on the tour with a 5 year old daughter named Aida who befriended Zachary and Ari. Ari let her draw on his sketchpad. I felt sorry for the little girls. Her mom was covered head to toe in black and would not let Aida go in the water at the beach despite the girl's obvious desire. Andrea offered to supervise, but her offer was firmly declined.
What I'm leaving out of the description is all of the complaining I heard about the lack of diet Fanta, the incredible difficulty of finding a decent place to eat, the fact that the public bathrooms charged 50 cents, the time I paused to look at something and my family kept going and we spent about 20 minutes looking for each other, and the argument about what to order for dinner, possibly making Oio both one of the most beautiful and one of the most miserable couple of hours I ever spent.
By the time that we got back to the hotel at 10:30 only the incredible beauty of my wife was able to keep me awake for a few more minutes. I slept very well that night.
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