Travel

A bar in romantic Santorini Island

bar

A view of Santorini Island, Greece. PHOTO | Jackson Biko

There are people who prefer to drink during flights, and that is fine. It kills time or it makes them sleep better or they just feel entertained. Or they are just regular drunks.

Flights, especially, long haul ones can be turned into bars because of that.

Most airlines have small bottles of whisky but if you take seven of them they become a bottle or two. There are flights where everybody from seat 16C all the way to the back of the plane seem to be drinking.

So if you are a drinker, you need to be mindful of this small fact that might seem useless after your third drink. As much as you feel like the whole world is ready to engage you in talk, please note that the observation is erroneous.

The whole world doesn’t want to engage you in conversation. So don’t engage the whole world in conversation.

Also try and not feel the need to try and entice your seat mate to drink. Don’t say, “just have one, it will make you feel better.”

It’s annoying. Also when you sleep you snore and when you keep going to the bathroom, you disrupt people. The good thing is drunk passengers are not singing in the plane, yet.

Flying is hard enough than to sit next to someone who drinks. Don’t be that passenger, but I did not care much because I was going to a dreamy place—Greece—which is rarely visited by Kenyans.

Santorini Island in Greece is expensive. You know how expensive a place is by how much they sell Bolognese.

There wasn’t any Bolognese in this bar located in the village of Oia. We were told that it was the best place to have a drink in Oia. (Pronounced “ia”).

There aren’t many bars in Oia. Most people prefer to drink from their hotels or to drink wine at their dinner table.

Marykay’s Bar in Santorini is run by heavily bearded men. The deejay is bearded. The one and only waiter is bearded.

There is a main bar which can sit eight men. Then there is one table at the entrance and three more tables inside. The bathroom is dirty.

The deejay booth is wedged at the end of the room, from where a very surly deejay sits. The music is excellent; very black-ish soul music, very Motown if you will.

The menu is mostly cocktails, wine and a few choice of spirits. A tot of a decent whisky will go for something like Sh1,500, which is exorbitant by all means.

But this is Oia, Santorini, people seem to go there to spend. The staff doesn’t speak much English, like most people in the Island, but they will know if you want ice.

The vibe at Marykay’s is upbeat. It doesn’t get too full, thankfully. It starts picking from 9pm when the deejay starts playing and it keeps picking until 1am.

It’s a great bar to visit, if you don’t mind spending.