Ios: Bring Your Thongs and Sunnys

We were a bit sad to leave Santorini, as we thought no other island could possibly top it, but we did want to see some others and heard through the grapevine that Ios is a really fun party island. We took the recommendation of our friend, Adam, who we met in Santorini and decided to stay at "Far Out Club". The place was pretty cool, definitely a backpacker-friendly establishment - tons of little bungalos, huts, swimming pools, and an area for camping. We checked into our cute little bungalo and didn't think much of it at first, but we would soon started referring to it as "the honeymoon suite" (I'll get there later).

Far Out's location was awesome, literally right across the street from the beach and it had free lounge chairs and umbrellas. Within 2 minutes of arriving we bumped into Santorini Adam and his friend, Dave. We did not think Adam would still be in Ios since he arrived a few days earlier than we did, but he liked it so much that he got a job working as a canoe tour instructor and extended his stay. Not a bad deal. He told us some places to go and we agreed to meet up later in the evening. So we spent the rest of the day on the beach doing some first class relaxing and tanning.



On the beach we learned our new favorite phrase: thongs and sunnys. A big group of Aussies were sitting in the lounge chairs next to ours so we all just started chatting. They were hilarious, joking around with each other and cracking us up. After awhile they all went into the water and asked us to watch their things while they were gone. As the last guy ran into the water he yelled back at us: "there's nothing valuable there to steal anyway, it's just thongs and sunnys!". I don't know why Sarah and I got such a kick out of that but we loved it and have since adopted it as our own.

Here's how Ios night life works: pre-game in your bungalo from 10-12, take the last bus into town at midnight, chill out there for an hour, then hop from bar to bar until the sun comes up, stumble home and watch the sunrise on the beach. We stopped by Adam and Dave's bungalo to pre-game and were shocked at the prison cell-like conditions that they had been put up in - our room had a twin bed, a full bed, table and chairs, art on the wall, and a window. Their room, on the other hand, had 2 twin beds and a small bed-side table, no window even. We had to brag about how much better our room was (for the same price, mind you) so we picked up the pre-gaming party, brought it to our bungalo, and bumped some toons on the mini i-Pod speakers. And viola, our bungalo being known as the "honeymoon suite" was born. After hanging out for a bit we headed into town and it was pretty crazy - 20+ bars all crammed into one section, all competing to get as many people to come into theirs as possible. Ergo: lure us in with 1 Euro shots, 2 for 1 specials, and dated American music which we all know we love to dance to. Great times partying in Ios.
Don't think we just partied the whole time, of course we ventured out to explore the island as well. We decided to go on Dave and Adam's canoe trip to see some private beaches and great views of the island. We first canoed out to a rocky area where we jumped off 8 meter high rocks into the water and did some snorkling. After a few hours there we took the canoes out to a private beach to hang out and relax, it was another beautiful day in paradise. After the trip was over a bunch of us decided to go to dinner at a nearby restaurant, Harmony, that has awesome sunset views. There was an acoustic guitarist playing who was incredible - he rocked everything from Pink Floyd to Jack Johnson to Outkast. After that we went out for one last night on the town before heading off to our last island.

We decided that our last stop before heading back to Athens would be Mykonos. Everyone we met said it is the best island and that we had to go so let's see if it lives up to the hype...