AT 3:30 A.M. I WAS WOKEN UP by Joy snoring loudly. I had misplaced my earplugs so I had no protection. I tried to get her to stop but she didn’t hear me, and finally I sat bolt upright in bed and turned on the light. Having had very little sleep for three nights in a row, I lost my cool and began shouting, ordering her to stop snoring, right now! When Joy at last heard me and opened her eyes, I must have seemed like a crazed lunatic. I suggested that since she could not control her snoring she should stay awake the rest of the night and let me sleep for a change. This she refused to do; instead she picked up her bedding and moved herself into the bathroom so that I would not hear her snore. It didn’t help.

I made coffee, read, and tried to fall back asleep but to no avail. At 8:30, dog-tired and hopping mad, I got up and took a shower, dried my hair with the blow dryer (which finally woke Joy up), then went out by myself for breakfast in a little taverna I’d noticed earlier. This was our only “blow-up” after traveling together for several weeks and I was feeling very bad about it.

The taverna seemed to be the happening early-morning place in Fira, with Greek music playing loudly, Greeks coming in and out with deliveries of foodstuffs and for early morning socializing. It was hard to tell the customers from the tradesmen, as everyone who came through the door hung around and chatted for at least half an hour.

Sitting at a window with a bird’s-eye view of the street, I ordered an omelet and bread and took out my reading and writing materials. It began to rain and soon it was pouring heavily, and I spent two delightful hours in there waiting for it to clear up as I had no umbrella or raingear.  

* * *

At 10:30 I returned to the room just in time to catch Joy leaving, her bags all packed and having left me a note (which I never read) to find a room for herself. I knew she was not to blame, so I suggested we have a cup of coffee together. We did, in the village square, but it didn’t really work. I may have shouted things during our middle-of-the-night row that were still ringing in the air, and Joy was acting super cool. In any case, we agreed to leave Santorini and return to Athens as the bad weather here was forcing us indoors most of the time. It would have been a great place for a honeymoon, but not for the two of us. At a small travel agent we booked seats on an Olympic Airways flight for 8:30 p.m.

Joy wanted to take off and go shopping, but I didn’t have a raincoat so couldn’t go with her. “I might as well, since I have this raincoat,” she said, whereupon she got up and left me sitting alone at the table, at noon, with nothing to do and nobody to do it with until we were to meet to go to the airport at 6:30.

When it stopped raining I ventured out to find a place where I could have my reading glasses tightened. (My eye, incidentally, was getting blacker and blacker, and drew attention everywhere I went, forcing me to wear my sunglasses, even in the blinding rain.)

Across from the optometrist I walked over to the bus station and found a bus that was leaving in ten minutes for the island’s big archaeological site, Akrotiri. It cost only DRX 350 ($1.25), so I went for it.

It was a fascinating ride through many villages, with sweeping views of the island at every turn. After half an hour I was dropped off in the middle of the town of Akrotiri, which had already closed its shutters and bedded down for the afternoon.

There was nobody in sight but I found a small hotel with the front door open and left my daypack there with the manager, who was taking a nap on a couch behind the front desk. From there I followed a pastoral road leading to the sea, videotaping it all the way as blinding rain alternated with bright sunshine, trying to shield my camera from the elements.

The archaeological site was closed so I continued on to the seaside, to a place called Red Beach, because of the color of the rocks and sand. I walked along the rocks until I found an open taverna and ordered a glass of retsina. There were several tables with Greek men still lingering over their midday meal, loudly swapping tall tales in Greek. With my limited knowledge of Greek I got the gist of much of what they were saying, and as usual the talk was about money, women, and cars – lefta, gynecka, and aftokinta! As I sat there staring out at the water sipping my drink, it began to pour heavily. With no protection from the rain I stayed there waiting for it to end for well over an hour.

When there was a break in the weather I headed back to the village to make the 3:30 bus. It began pouring again while I was walking and I was drenched when I got there, but the bus never came. The owner of a small grocery store, the one open business in town, informed me in Greek that the next bus would come in an hour, so I walked around the town some more, videotaping the various ways the Greeks spell “omelet” on the signs of their restaurants and hotels.

When the bus still didn’t come after an hour and a half, and with the rain coming down in buckets again, my only refuge was inside the small store where I  killed another hour making small talk with the owner. At least it gave me a chance to practice my almost-forgotten Greek.

Finally the bus to Fira came. I paid another DRX 350 and went for a long, long ride—much longer than coming here—through many villages, videotaping as much as I could before sundown. The bus was full of Greeks, all talking to each other and to the driver, commuting to various points around the island.

Back in Fira I immediately bumped into Joy and we decided to have dinner at my taverna from the morning omelet. I had a delicious bean soup with fresh bread and Joy had stuffed grape leaves, and by now enough time had elapsed that we were friends again. After that we took a taxi to the airport where our short flight took off at 8:45.

* * *

In Athens, we took a taxi to the by-now-familiar Adams Hotel in Plaka where we took two rooms, for a total of DRX 14,000, both leading out to the rooftop terrace with an unobstructed view of the Acropolis. The manager tried to offer us rooms on the second floor, warning us that we would be cold, but I insisted on those top floor rooms. We seemed to be the only guests, and since nobody else was sharing the floor or the common bathrooms with us, we felt as if we were staying in a luxurious penthouse apartment.

At 3:30 a.m. I woke up freezing. All the electricity in the hotel had gone out, including (or maybe because of!) the little electric heaters the manager had given us to warm our rooms. I phoned the front desk and someone brought me another blanket but it wasn’t enough. My cold got worse. I layered up with all my clothes and even my sneakers, and crawled back into bed.

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