Restaurants line the rim of the hillside walk and we picked one early enough to get a good spot.  Pasta, grilled veggies, red wine (chilled?) bread and olive oil. 

It was quite windy and as the sun went down, quite chilly.  I wish I’d worn long jeans and a wool sweater and hat!  The woman in the little sweater kept wrapping her arms around herself.  She must have been freezing.

It was after 8 pm when I took this photo of the sun just starting to set.

Fira changes colors reflecting the sun

Mystery woman and Randal, though one profile photo reminded me of our pal Sharman.

Not sure who she was but she was a great addition to my photos.

Even in B& W

Sunset watchers lined the walkways.

It is said that at Oia you can actually see the sun touch the water, but we couldn’t here at Fira

Walking back to our “room.”

We ate an early lunch at the Terpsi Music Café where the waiter was very helpful.  We asked hotel prices along the caldera and 200 Euro was the answer, about 175 Euro more than we wanted to pay.  We were then told his boss had rooms below the café, but still with lovely views and one would be 50 Euro. 50 Euro was okay and we paid when we agreed to take the room.  No receipt or anything so maybe a little odd. Also odd when we booked our ferry tickets later in the day and the tourist officer asked our hotel and we showed thecafe’s card.  She was surprised as she’d not heard of it.  Hmm.

  It was your basic dorm room except for the balcony with the really good view and the free wifi so we took it.  It was certainly clean and good enough and a great location.  The bathroom access was out on the balcony like when we visited Charmaine and Linda at their island home and the bathroom was off the porch with a lovely view of the lake.  Take note of the steep steps, they go down, down, down.

So we came back from watching the sunset and after some work on these emails we went to sleep as we needed an early start in the morning.  Thankfully there was no coffee maker in the room or this story would have been very sad as we would have dawdled longer before trying to leave.   We had to catch the only 8 am bus from Fira to the port to catch the 9:20 am ferry back to Ios.  The only ferry that day! We woke about 6ish and got ready to leave and go find some breakfast but, alas, the hallway door wouldn’t open.  We have no idea how it had gotten locked or why we’d been given no key. Across from our room was a storage room and perhaps someone had visited it and then locked the hall door.  Randal tried everything, nothing worked; but wisely refused my suggestion to tie sheets together and climb out the window.  We banged and pounded and banged and yelled and finally woke the folks in the room further down the stairs.  Or at least one of the guests who came out but spoke no English and had no clue really what to do.  We yelled down to the donkey men when we saw them coming up the hillside.  No luck there.  Then a young oriental woman heard us and called down from the hillside path above but she spoke little English and also had no real way to help as no one was in the café to speak with.  We asked her to find the police and off she went somewhere.  Then we banged and yelled and banged and yelled and woke more guests downstairs thankfully one of them a strong young man.  He came up and was able to catch Randal who could then climb from the window.  Not only were the stairs too far to jump, but the steps were narrow and descended sharply making a broken something very possible if we’d fallen.  Then Randal and the young man both caught me, and I have to say I was really scared as it was a long way down if it hadn’t worked.  The time of our escape was 7:15 am  amazingly giving us time for a quick breakfast before boarding the bus.  The bus was on time and the ferry was on time so we had no time to spare during this crazy escapade.

  I’m honestly not sure what we would have done had the young man not been there.  Or if there had been a fire!  We were locked into that hallway with no fake TV stunt person to actually kick down the door.  Back on DoraMac I found a contact email for the café and wrote to them.  We’ll see if they answer.

   During past vacations I’ve been locked in bathrooms as have several folks I’ve spoken to recently, Jane and Collin from Hydeaway  being 2 of them.  And my college roommate Eileen and I got locked in the stairwell of the Boston John Hancock building on Bunker Hill Day and had to walk down a dozen or more floors.  And Randal and I had to let ourselves out of our pension in Istanbul but could find the correct key behind the reception desk to do that. I guess in the Eurozone  they must just expect everyone to sleep till noon.   In this situation, at the least, we might have missed the only ferry that day. The worst case scenario we would have had to use the sheet trick in case of a fire. I do remember seeing a red fire alarm pull and I think some red fire extinguishers.  I was tempted about the red fire pull but it didn’t look so much as if it would work and the consequences of it working  weren’t so much better.  The gods must have been watching over us to have that young man in the room below.  Next time we’ll think to ask for a corridor key.

Louvered shutters did open and the windows to the left were our balcony.   One certainly wouldn’t have to worry about anyone breaking into the windows from below.  The door that wouldn’t open is to the right of the windows.  And adventure hopefully never to be repeated. 

I call this one, “what happens on Santorini, stays on Santorini.” 

We saw these three very pleasant young men on the ferry from Santorini back to Ios.  As we were leaving I asked what part of the States they were from.  (They had no tell-tale southern, New England Brooklyn or mid-west accent that I could tell.  Actually they were from the mid-west;  they were from Chicago and were travelling before returning to work and school.