Unhappy Birthday!
So...I wanted to do something special with Will for my 60th birthday but we never got around to it until now. I have always wanted to see Santorini so decided we would go there and I would turn 61 whilst there too. How perfect!
Sadly my birthday turned out not to be how I had envisioned it.
(The following contains some scenes that people might find disturbing).
Friday 28th April 2023 dawned with Will feeling unwell. He had slept badly in the night, with a headache and woke up feeling drained and aching. He had actually started to feel unwell the previous afternoon but it worsened after we got back from our Fira to Oia walk.
I was feeling chilled and relaxed but he said I needed to get up because something was being delivered at 9.30 am. It turned out to be a room service breakfast, delicious french toast with blueberries and a kind of sweet custard.
My sister and niece had arranged this surprise for me which was very nice and very filling, though Will couldn't face his.
After the surprise breakfast I walked into town to get some tablets for Will. I got some paracetemol and Ibuprofen which cost 17 euros, 15 pounds!!! or 28 AUD!!!!
He took some tablets and braved going out so that my special day was not ruined. We had picked up a hire car from the airport when we had arrived but had not used it for the last two days so today we decided to head to the southern end of the island and explore around there.
I was very uncomfortable in a left hand drive car and having to change gears with my right hand but I had to get over it.
We drove right down to the southern tip of the island to Faros, a lighthouse, which sadly was nothing like the ones we had seen on Lewis and Harris. We made an unscheduled stop at an old Venetian castle in Akrotiri and then went to see the excavations at Akrotiri of a prehistoric settlement. It is Europe's oldest city and is 3700 years old. The excavations started in 1974 and are still ongoing. I was not prepared for the scale of it as we entered through a doorway. The building covering the excavations, sheltering it from the weather, was incredible in itself. It was an incredible sight and amazing to think that people had created these houses and streets 3700 years ago, even making clay pipes for a sewage system.
After being blown away by the sight of the excavations we walked along to Red Beach, where red cliffs towered above the black volcanic sand of the beach. On the way back we stopped at a Taverna for some Giros, Will had chicken and I had pork. We had been trying to eat as many local dishes as we could but pizza and pasta were on all the menus.
After our lunch we headed to Vlichada beach to see how the winds had carved out the cliffs. Will was flagging and pretty much moving like the Walking Dead but, bless him, he didn't want t ruin my day.
Before we went back the guidebook suggested a wander through Emporio, a village practically untouched by modern life and some indication of how life used to be on the island.
We had only just been exploring the alleyways for a few minutes when I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my tummy. I knew I needed to find a toilet quick.
We went back to the car and Will started to search for the nearest public toilet. Now Santorini is very beautiful and lavish in places but it turns out there are only 4 public toilets on the whole island and the nearest one was a 10 minute drive away.
As soon as we got in the car I started driving but had chosen the wrong direction and we ended up down a very narrow dead end and had to turn round and go back again. My stomach spasms were getting worse but I was the only names driver so had to do the driving. We were bombing along with me wailing, arms outstretched pushing on the steering wheel, in second gear as I tried to hold back the inevitable.
Finally, we got to where will said the toilet was and I screeched to a halt at the side of the road and scraped the side of the car along some white fence posts.
" WHERE? WHERE IS IT?" I was utterly desperate, but we couldn't see it. We drove off a little further and spotted it just around the corner. I sped into a parking spot and dashed across the road.
"1 Euro" said a little girl, smiling.
" I only have two, take that" and I pushed past her and dashed in.
Once inside I sat down and tried to get my shorts off but I had fastened them tightly as they kept slipping down with the weight of my camera in my pocket. I couldn't loosen the knot and was frantically trying and then....it was too late.
So, there I was, at probably the worst moment in my life, in a toilet in Santorini, on my birthday, during a holiday that was meant to be so special, having just soiled myself. At least, if anything, the holiday was going to be memorable.
There was barely a quarter of a toilet roll available to clean up, so I used all of that and my socks, which were actually Will's socks, because I forgot to pack socks and he forgot to pack underpants.
There was no way I could put my shorts back on so how was I going to get back to the car?
Thankfully, I had put a t shirt on under my shirt, so I took them off and put my shirt back on and then put my legs through the arm holes of the t shirt and pulled it up to cover my modesty. I tied it round my waist and knotted the hole your head goes through and tucked it up. I was pretty pleased with my ingenuity. I tied my jumper around my waist to hide, a little bit, what I was wearing down below. I rolled up the soiled clothing as best as I could, checked that I had left no evidence of the horrors that had just occurred, took a deep breath and went out to wash my hands.
As I finally left the little girl was no longer smiling, in fact she looked utterly horrified as she glanced down at my makeshift shorts, that looked a bit like lycra. I just kept on going but her granny ran after me and handed me the one euro change. I took it but felt bad because it could have gone towards much needed disinfectant.
We drove back and while I waited in the car park for Will to bring me some tracksuit bottoms from our apartment I was able to scratch most of the white paint from the fence off the side of the car with my fingernail.
Back at the apartment I was cleaning myself and clothes for ages and had just finished when the phone rang. It was the restaurant at the hotel, they had something for me and could they bring it?
It turned out to be a birthday cake...
We couldn't face it! it was very nice of them but we binned it.
There was a very nice sunset that evening which I watched from the spa bath and later we did go out for a meal, but they got my order wrong and Will had finished his meal before I finally got mine and then for the rest of the meal the waiter who had made the mistake kept apologising profusely every time he went past as if my forgiveness would save his life.
Here are the pics from my Unhappy Birthday!
