Woke up for another morning of exercise — this time to walk the 280 steps down to Ammoudi port.  And these are no ordinary steps — they’re deep, requiring at least two to three footsteps each; they have rocks in the middle and marble at the edges, making them both pokey and slippery; they’re switchbacked; and they’re often inhabited by donkeys (which smart people use for transport), so in places they have a nose-wrinkling aroma and obstacle-course donkey remnants.

But the views of the little port were lovely, and we appreciated getting our bodies moving before our last day of travel.

It also gave us one last chance to photograph Oia from all sorts of angles.

Hung out at the pool briefly after our hotel breakfast –we’re going to miss this spot (especially the part where we wonder about what so many Russians are doing wandering in and out of the little tiny room behind the pool).

Then we took a few final pictures from our room before saying farewell to Oia.

After that, we started our incredible twelve hours of travel: an excessively long “transfer” mini-bus to the port of Athinios that made stops far and wide on the northern part of the island, a ferry to the port of Piraeus, (near Athens), and a taxi to the Lila Hotel, where we landed exhausted and hungry.

Our meager and low-quality lunch of salad and spanikopita at the port and the candy in our bag were not enough to hold us through nine hours on the ferry!

The ferry ride was really slow — apparently, the “fast ferry” broke, so they replaced it with the “slow ferry.”  But they didn’t bother telling anyone about the switch at any point, so there were lots of angry people on board who only realized by the power of deduction that we weren’t getting anywhere on time.  Fortunately, it was an extremely comfortable ferry, and we scored a seat (1) near the air conditioner and (2) across from very nice people.  We spent the first four hours with two New York consulting/real estate young men, and the second half of the ride with a family of four from Asheville, North Carolina (who were traveling all over Greece and Italy with a pressure cooker that the mom had proudly bought in Italy).  Many thanks to Sandra, Randy, Francesca, and Matthew Glasgow for feeding cookies and their last spanikopita (a really yummy one) so we wouldn’t starve)!

And I enjoyed views from the back of the ferry, of everything from the small island of Ios, to another glorious sunset, to the ferry’s terrific wake: