WEATHER: Hot and 30C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing all of what Santorini has to offer
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Got a little sunburned on one of the beaches
BUYS OF THE DAY: Fresh plate of calamari for 7EUR
WORD OF THE DAY: Dream smasher
Good morning Santorini. Man it was great to be home by 12.30am, after a few drinks at the pub, I woke up fresh and not a headache or spewy thought to be had. Life is good today.
Dee and I had booked the day tour today. The others had decided to do their own thing in town till we met again back at the hotel that afternoon. After congregating at 11.05am, we boarded the coach to start our tour. I guess due to numbers, we also had some random people join our tour and some of them were Spanish so it turned out to be a bi-lingual tour. I am not a big fan of the bi-lingual, especially if your language is the secondary language of the day, but our French tour guide was actually quite good and divided an even amount of time and infliction to the Spanish as well as ourselves.
Our first stop was to the highest point in the island at 1750m above sea level for a panoramic view of the whole island. It was pretty cool to see the whole island in its entirety to appreciate just how big it actually is. Santorini is essentially what remains of an enormous volcanic explosion that destroyed the earliest settlements on what was formerly a single island, which led to the creation of the current geological caldera. A giant central lagoon, more or less rectangular, and measuring about 12 by 7 km, is surrounded by 300 m high steep cliffs on three sides. The island slopes downward from the cliffs to the surrounding Aegean Sea. It is just beautiful. The island is still pretty barren of trees, as it is also a windy island like Mykonos, but due to its volcanic soil, it can grow things quite well in very dry conditions. Grapes being one of the things that survives here surprisingly well.
We then made a trip to the remnants of a castle. As I am starting to find out, everything on the island is reached by steps, slopes or hills. I haven’t seen too much flat / straight land at all in my travels today. So after climbing 123 steps, we made it to the top of what was left of the castle, which wasn’t much, but the view from here was also incredible. Definitely worth the climb, even in 30 degree heat, but it is a dry heat here and not a humid heat, so it is just the sun in your face the whole day, as there is not much shade at all to be had anywhere, except inside buildings.
We then travelled to a small village that we got to walk through from one end to the other. Not many tourists come here, and it really was just like a residential suburb of the island. I did have a picture in my head that there would be a lot of white buildings with the blue roofs everywhere. But from what we have seen it is just the chapels / churches that have the blue domes. All the housing is painted white, and has blue doors and shutter; they just don’t seem to have the blue roofs. A funny thing sometimes what you expect to see and what there actually is.
Our lunch stop was at a black sand beach that had a restaurant and sun chairs and umbrellas for us to use. We got given 1 hour and 45 minutes here, so Dee and I wasted no time and found some sun chairs straight away and got our ‘sun’ on. Lunch was bought to us along with some drinks and we didn’t move from here the whole time. Dee went in for a quick dip, but I was happy to just read my book and chillax. The black sand was so so so hot to walk on which makes sense when the colour attracts the sun I suppose. It was nice to have the wind in your hair, the sun on your face and not have to worry about a thing. We LOVE the Greek Islands. I ordered fresh calamari, and it was delicious, it just missed some lemon and a little salt, but it was good all the same. 75% of it came as what we are used to at home in the rings, but the other 25% still had legs and 2 bits looked like pig ears, so I had to draw the line and they were left on my plate. I did have a nibble on one of the legs, but they looked like legs, and I just couldn’t get my mind set around it, crazy I know. But for 7EUR I think it was pretty good value for what I got.
Everything seems to be only a 15 minute drive on the island to anywhere. So we drove 15 minutes to our second last stop which was a view of the red sand beach. We had to trek a little ways to get there, so it was a more secluded beach, as it was a bit of a hike to get there. We were a little dubious on how red the red sand beach was going to be, but it was like an Ayers Rock colour, and looked pretty awesome with the red and black volcanic cliffs in the background. Definitely worth the walk and would have been great to spend some more time here. I have seen black beached before in Tahiti and also in Iceland, but a red sand beach was pretty awesome.
What a day! Time to relax back at the hotel for a few hours before dinner at 7.45pm. It was a walkabout dinner, so Ed took us back into Fira to a Greek-Italian restaurant, once again overlooking the caldera. It is just amazing here. The food at the restaurant was awesome and I had a Greek salad and some chicken and parmesan risotto for my feed and it was just delicious. The prices were quite reasonable as well considering the location of where we were.
It was STUNNING as we watched another beautiful sunset go down on the island of Santorini.
Ahhhhhhhhh the serenity…………………
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