Ahhh......Santorini!

What can I say about Santorini in a few words and pictures?  I have too many gorgeous photos of sunsets, the sea, the white-washed houses, and boats.  To try and pick out a few will be challenging, but time is running out for us here in Paris and I want to get these last few posts done on the trip so I can concentrate on Paris.  So this will be brief, I think.

We arrived by ferry to an island quite a bit different from Mykonos.  Santorini is HIGH on cliffs....actually the rim of an ancient volcano where the sea has just left the middle as a volcanic island, and parts of the rim.  The cliffs surprised me.

The hotel was typically Greek with tile floors, simple furnishings, but a view to die for.  We arrived in late afternoon and looked out our window to this.  After a dozen pictures watching the sun go down, we agreed this has to be one of the best sunset views we have ever seen.

The weather was cool and the hotel was actually a bit of a walk into the main town of Thira, but being the cheapies that we are, we walked anyway, umbrella in hand.  The town is a maze of little streets on the cliffs, full of shops and restaurants.  It's actually a pretty big tourist area as cruise ships make their way and dump the "boaters" there for a day of shopping.  We took pictures here and there but mostly just headed away from the town to walk and take in the sea views.

One of the big promoted events there is taking a boat cruise to the island in the middle of the caldera.  This involves walking DOWN to the port, a nice little trip of over 600 steps.  Many people take donkeys, but we walked, of course.

The island was....well....full of lava rock, of course.  Lyle wondered why we did this, as it was similar to a few other volcanoes we had hiked on.  Not much to see, just black rock.  I insisted, though, on hiking to the top and he grudgingly went along.  On the way back the boat stopped at a "hot springs" where the water was supposed to be warm from the long-since-dead volcano.  So Lyle actually jumped in from the boat and swam with a number of other gullible tourists to find this hot spring.  Well...it wasn't that hot.  This was the month of May...the Aegean water had not warmed up much and mixed with the hot water.  Result....not even luke warm.  This was a good decision on my part not to go in....bad decision on my part to go to the island.

Our favorite spot on Santorini was the town of Oia. We rented a car to drive there as it was not walking distance!  First we headed to the bottom of the cliffs where we heard of some wonderful seafood restaurants.  But the weather was cool and windy, and we decided not to eat there.  But we had to try the calamari...

 The town of Oia was beautiful!  The tourists from the cruises were not so abundant there, but it looked like it was a town full of wealthy villa-owners.  It is a town with sunset views that draw people every night to ooooooh and awwwww as sun sinks into the ocean. I am quite sure it is a daily ritual.

On our last day, since we still had a car, we drove around some other parts of the island.  We found some more black sand beaches, vineyards, and small quaint towns to explore a little. Some of the beach towns are pretty active in the evening, full of young partiers I am sure...the beach crowd who live in campgrounds, hostels and cheap hotels.  Quite a contrast from Oia, but it was interesting to see how Santorini can draw people of all ages and incomes...the cruisers, the rich and famous, and the beach goers.

It was hard to leave this beautiful island after spending three wonderful days here, but our last port-of-call was waiting.....Athens.  We said good-bye to an awesome place, wondering if we would ever have the opportunity to come again.