Plan? What plan? And the settlement of debts

I almost never sleep past 7:00 AM at home so awaking at noon here in Oia was a surprise for sure. Yeah, there's the whole jet lag thing going on and sure, Alex was up pretty much the entire night, but it was still a jolt. Half of our day was already gone. The fresh bread, left by our Airbnb hosts each morning, was hard and dry, having baked in the sun all morning. The plan for the day was scrapped.

Instead, we hung out in our cave (which is really vacation enough) and then headed out to revisit some of Alex's middle of the night haunts. First stop was the restaurant Skala, where Nikolas (who was a waiter -- mistakenly referred to as an owner in our previous post) had given Alex food. Turns out it was not food from Skala's kitchen, as I'd assumed. Nikolas struck up a conversation with Alex and took pity on him and his voracious 4 AM hunger. He brought Alex to his motorbike and give him the food that he was taking home from the restaurant for himself, right off the back of his bike!! Alex thought perhaps he was being lured into a trap of some kind but it turns out Nikolas was just a nice guy recognizing hunger when he sees it. I'm glad Alex thought about the danger of following a strange man to his vehicle, but kind of wish he'd just, you know, listened to his instinct. All turned out well, as some of the best life lessons do. At Skala, we ate magnificent salad and pasta. Then, we left a note and ten Euro for Nikolas, thanking him for his generosity. 

From there, we headed to the ice cream shop where the kid scored a freebie after not having cash to pay for his order. We paid for last night's scoop and scored two more. Ice cream in hand, we headed for our rental car. 

Driving in Greece is sort of like a video game. There are almost no stop signs and definitely no stop lights. Bikes and busses and humans and all sorts of vehicles are in your path at any given time, and apparently everyone is trying to get the high score by arriving at thier destination at record speed. It takes some adjusting because behaviors such as, you know, stopping for pedestrians, is frowned upon. I drove around quite a bit of the island in our convertible so that we could experience more than just our home village of Oia. 

We wound up at a beach in Kamari (jeez - I think that's the right name) enjoying the last bits of the sun shining on the black sand before it fell over the cliff side. We sipped fruit drinks and talked about the merits of planning your day versus letting it unfold naturally. Alex said he never wants to be a tourist, but of course he can't really escape the label. We threw lava stones in the water.

The drive home was pretty uneventful, except for the parking games playing out in the few spots in Oia. I won. And then, we enjoyed another meal at Lotza, the restaurant overlooking the caldera that is run by our Airbnb hosts.

And sleeping actually worked tonight. Today we will head over to Naxos island. Goodbye Santorini!