Sunny Santorini

Alright, La Coruña was amazing, and Greece, although still amazing, was COMPLETELY different.  On Thursday, April 14^th, we woke up at 4 AM and began our long series of travels for the day.  After spending all day in planes and airports, we finally got to Santorini at nighttime, just in time to check into our hostel, grab some dinner, and sleep.   We stayed near Perissa Beach, which is on the outskirts of the island but definitely worth exploring.  For the most part, the beaches on Santorini have black sand, and Perissa Beach is no different.  The main cities of Fira and Oia were a bus ride away, but they are the traditional Santorini that tourists generally think of.  Both were extremely beautiful and in addition to amazing views, both had some excellent shopping!  Oia is famous for its’ sunset, and it was pretty spectacular, with the sun setting over the water. 

On Saturday, Kelsey, Nora and I took a bike ride up and down some winding hills, through various terrains in search of the Red Beach.  Thinking that this beach was full of red sand, we were quite surprised when it turned out to be mostly rocks.  I thought it was a very neat and different place, and definitely worth the 12 miles roundtrip we biked that day.  The bike ride also allowed us to see some parts of the island that we wouldn’t normally see, and was good exercise too!

We had some great food in Santorini as well.  From trying traditional Moussaka to sampling special Easter cookies at the 24-hour bakery to eating Greek yogurt in Greece, Santorini was definitely a culinary delight.  Eating gyros in Greece and also lots of gelato was fun too!  I, as you can probably tell already, LOVE FOOD, and I think it is fun to learn about a culture through some of their delicacies. 

There were a few things about Santorini that were a bit surprising.  For instance, the ‘Santorini’ that comes to mind when you think of the word is really only limited to the cities of Fira and Oia; the rest of the island is very geographically diverse, and very desert-like and arid in many places.  There are a lot of hills.  It is a lot poorer of an island than I realized.  Additionally, there are many stray dogs roaming around, coming after you in search of food.  To be clear, it is not that I dislike animals, but my natural tendency is to back away from them.   Therefore, I was not a huge fan of these dogs following us all around, and it made it hard to sit still on the beach, in my opinion.  Finally, because it was the off-season, transportation around the island was very limited, and buses were free to not run by the bus schedule if their drivers so desired.  An interesting experience for sure, but I still loved Santorini and had a great time there. 

At the end of our time in Santorini, we caught a ferry to Athens.  Although it was several hours long, some of the views of the other islands were pretty cool, and we finally got to Athens around midnight.  But that is a story for another post.  Stay tuned, Athens is the next adventure on the list!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 27th, 2011 at 9:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Sunny Santorini”

1. Kelsey says:

   May 3, 2011 at 6:03 am

   Shopping and food galore!!

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