Santorini, Greece

Monday

Monday dawned bright and clear for our first morning in the islands. After a solid breakfast in the Costa Marina Villas (our accommodation), we made the most of the stunning day by setting off to explore the town of Fira, the main settlement on Santorini and our home for the next three days. Fira is a thriving collection of cobbled streets, bars, restaurants, ice cream parlours and souvenir shops...some of our favourite things! But Fira’s main attractions are its fabulous caldera (a cliff formed by collapse of land following a volcano) and the views across the sea to the volcano itself.

After weaving our way through the dozens of narrow winding streets of Fira and enjoying some great (and very cheap) souvlakis for lunch, we made our way down the 589 steps to the port at the bottom of the cliff. It was so quiet and peaceful down at the port and the sun glistening on the water was spectacular. Rather than walk back up the 589 steps (or hire a mule), we took the cable car back up to Fira Town. We spent the late afternoon / evening enjoying a couple of cold drinks and watching the sun slowly sink behind the volcano to the west of Santorini; not a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon.

Tuesday

We woke up to gale force winds on our second day on the island, but nothing was going to deter us from our mission to conquer the island on a four wheeler. Nothing that is, apart from the Archangel Gabriel who apparently chose 25 March to let Mary in on the virgin birth secret and therefore marked the date as a religious holiday in Greece. So it took a bit of time to find a hire shop that was open, but once we were on our yellow beast it was worth the effort.

We motored up to Oia, Santorini's second biggest town in the north-western corner of the island. We say motored, but due to the hills, the head wind, and the fact that our little beast was carrying two passengers, in truth we were moving at around 15 -30 kph most of the time. Thanks to some "interesting" sign-posting around Santorini, we took the scenic route to Oia, about twice the distance and more exposed to the coastal wind!

Oia was very pretty, but resembled a ghost town. We were not sure whether this was due to the fact that tourist season does not start in Santorini for a good few weeks yet, meaning many shops were still closed for winter, or whether it was down to the religious holiday, but there were very few people around. So we took some snaps and had some lunch at the only food establishment open for business in town, named something weird like Thomas Grill. Then we were on or merry way on the yellow beast.

We headed for the south-eastern beaches, which in peak season are packed to the rafters with tourists. Monolithos Beach was really average. The beach was filthy, with rubbish everywhere and it was pretty much surrounded by factories. A little further south we found Kamari Beach, which, while also deserted, looked beautiful. There are dozens of streets full of bars, restaurants and hotels, many overlooking the beautiful beach. If we were to return to Santorini, Kamari Beach would be an ideal spot to stay.

On the way back, we hit some much higher speeds on the four wheeler, getting up to a crazy 54kph with a tail wind and going downhill. Back in Fira, we enjoyed another beautiful sunset over the volcano, although this one was indoors due to the ever increasing winds. We had a fantastic dinner in "Stamna" restaurant - great service, fully recommended.

Wednesday

Our final day in Santorini was a very relaxing one. We enjoyed wandering the shops again (including trying to out-do each other by finding the most tacky souvenir that 4 euros can buy). Megan got Tim a lovely snow globe with two blue dolphins inside and in return Tim bought Megan a mobile phone fridge magnet. Nice.

We sat in the sunny streets of Fira, ate ice cream, sipped a few beers and watched the world go by. We took an evening flight back to Athens and stayed in the very plush Holiday Inn hotel near the airport, in readiness for our early morning flight to Istanbul!







Costa Marina
Villas












Megan on
the main
street









Tim in
Fira













Crazy
statues


















Mules













Fira's
port











Oia













Church in
Oia











Oia's sea
view












Fira again















Megan on
our beast










Kamari
Beach












Sunset over
the volcano

Ditto

Another church

Fira