From Mykonos, Em and I jumped on a boat (after a stressful disgruntlement with the hotel) headed for the island of Santorini.( I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the hair I may or may not have ripped from Emma’s head during this journey). We expected it to look exactly as it did in the movie, ‘Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants’ and we were pretty thrilled when we realised it did just that. This island is literally perched atop cliffs, making the views all over the island sensational. We spent our first night at Oia for the world famous sunset. It truly was spectacular and hundreds of people lined the headland for the 9pm display. I had souvlaki for dinner on a balcony that hung out over the cliff.... beautiful.

We turned to the blessed quad bikes for another 24 hours of joy. Over the next days we visited two of the black beaches (the sand was blisteringly hot), got massages on the beach, saw another sunrise, visited a local winery (called Canava Rousos), explored Fira Town, sat in a church service of the Dominican Nuns, admired the views from many places and spent an afternoon in Pyrgos. This town is on the inland of the island and we climbed the stairs up to the castle (don’t think Roman castle – it was more like a church) and wow – the views were crazy wonderful. On our way back down we had a moment with a Greek grandpa – he had us sit on his donkey for a photo and we bought some home-grown tomatoes and house wine from him. For dinner we delved into some of Santorini’s specialties – stuffed tomatoes, grilled eggplant, tzatziki and a big greek salad. We saw the sunset again and collapsed in bed shortly after.

---- Side note: Quote Emma, “If I was a homeless person I’d save up and buy a portable DVD player.”

After beaching on what was meant to be our final day, we were exhausted by late afternoon. We decided to head back home for beer, souvlaki, wine, a cheese platter and ice-cream (some of these stages involved separate supermarket runs). We were awoken sometime after midnight by the strapping young Matthew Newey. Emi wisely opted for sleep while we went for cocktails at a bar with views over the caldera. Sleep happened sometime after that.

The next day DID NOT GO TO PLAN. We arrived at the airport to news that our flight had been cancelled due to our strike and we happened to fall within those four hours where no plane could fly out. We were told the earliest flight would be the following day. This made us a little distressed at the thought of one less day to see Rome but we headed off to a new hotel for the night. The upside was this hotel (while very out of town) had a swimming pool on the cliffs. We ate lots, swam and sunbaked, discover the joy that is our new favourite TV show, ‘Cougar Town’, then for dinner we went into town for a meal thanks to Aegean Airlines. We had a hilarious waiter who spoke to us in his best ‘loudspeaker voice’ as he brought us our food, “Here is your cappuccino courtesy of Aegan Airlines” and “This is for the passenger of Aegan Airlines”. It was just the joking we needed. We ordered up big – drinks, pizzas, crepes for dessert. We rolled into bed ready for attempt two in getting to Rome in the morning.

Our trip was much more successful second time around, although you still must take into account our early taxi pick up, the six hour wait in Athens, being practically strip searched because I kept beeping, arriving late in Rome, standing in a queue for train tickets in 30+ degree heat, a half hour delay on the train to Rome, paying double for our train tickets as there was only express trains late at night, a long walk from the train to the hotel, finding out our reservation was cancelled because we were a ‘no show’ (even though we had called the hotel the previous day) and being moved to another hotel awhile away. It was a long, long day. We found takeaway pizza and happily fell asleep in our tiny bed ready for the adventures in Rome that were ahead...