Santorini

My parents and I left Athens yesterday morning, awaking at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am to pack and take a taxi to the 4 hour ferry to Santorini. Once we got there, we hopped in a taxi that took us to our hotel. On the ride over I was wondering what all the fuss over the island was. The roads were busied with tourists on ATVs (I’m surprised many of them are still alive…) and cars, but besides that there wasn’t much else living. The surrounding island was barren and pretty deserted. It looked like someone would start to build a house, pour the concrete infrastructure and then just peace out, leaving it uninhabited.  After about a 20 min ride to our hotel, we arrived and as I reached the top of a set a stairs, I got my first glimpse of the beautiful Santorini that I had envisioned.

Every view is just as picture perfect as this 

Typical blue rounded roofs and white buildings

The main walkway was small, but lined with the picture-perfect white and blue-topped buildings, but completely crowded with tour after tour of people walking through, snapping photos and running into store mannequin displays. After settling into our hotel, which was located literally in the heart of the little town, we began to walk around. The ‘town’ we were in is called Oia and is the smaller of the two main towns on the island. It’s not at all like a stereotypical town, but a stretch of buildings across the ridge of the island, with some cascading down toward the water, but only on the caldera side of the island. The side of the island away from the caldera is the barren side that we took the taxi ride up. Basically all you do is walk up and down a main street and walk into tourist shops and take pictures, or you can go on one of many tourist boat tours. The town it is absolutely beautiful and is exactly like you see in pictures, but it is 100% tourist.

My dad and I sporting Greece colors

You can see here how the buildings cascade down the side of the mountain 

Roofs of buildings are at the same level as many walkways, so some have plants and other things on top for decoration

Later that evening, we joined up with (most of) the Phillips family and enjoyed wine on the roof, watching the sunset, which again, was picture-perfect as the whole town is. Later, we got dinner at about 10pm, typical Greek dinnertime. I didn’t have my midday siesta and was beyond exhausted from being up since 4:30 am, so I was most definitely not the liveliest and immediately passed out after dinner.

The girls!

The beautiful sunset

Buildings in the sunset

The following morning I got to sleep in and we took our sweet time with breakfast and packing, seeing as the town doesn’t wake up and start moving till about 10:30 am. My parents and I took a bus over to the larger town, Fira. I thought Oia was touristy—then I went to Fira. We walked around just as we had the day before (walked into the Phillps family randomly), took bunch of pics, ate some good Gyro for lunch, then went back to Oia. We had about two hours to kill before taking a bus back to port to catch our ferry to Crete, our final Greece destination! We found a Pasteria and sat on the rooftop porch to chill and eat delicious treats. This was definitely my favorite part—a mix of an amazing view, cool breeze, comfy chair to rest and a sugar fix made it the perfect way to leave Santorini.

Typical view from rooftop seating

Yummyy

Overall, I liked Santorini—it was so pretty and had gorgeous views, but I think I can cross it off my bucket list without any desire to go back. Random fact: you have to throw toilet paper into the trashcan in all of Santorini….weird. Anyways, right now I’m on the ferry to Crete with my parents and the Phillps. I am sooo excited for this next portion of our trip and meeting up with the rest!