Being Tourists in Santorini

After an uneventful pair of flights from Corfu -> Athens -> Santorini where no luggage was lost, we arrived on the island only to go to a winery and then promptly leave again. And then after spending a couple days in Folegandros, return again.

Side note #1: I found it amusing that getting to Corfu required us to fly directly over Corfu while en route from Munich to Athens, and then fly an hour back to get to Corfu. Similarly, we had to fly more or less over Folegandros en route from Athens to Santorini, only to take a ferry back to Folegandros. The ferry lobby must be powerful in Greece. Anyways I digress…

When you catch it in the right light, Santorini is everything it’s hyped up to be. The buildings are beautiful, the topography is remarkable, and the food is excellent. (Our first night here is where Elisse had the aforementioned ‘best baklava of her life’, after which she vowed never to eat baklava again.) It can be a little tricky to catch those moments though, especially when you’re there in essentially the height of tourist season. All the pictures below that feature very few people were somewhat challenging to come by. For example, I snapped the photo that shows Elisse walking down an outdoor corridor looking down onto a sunset-lit bay in a brief moment between high volume pedestrian traffic going both ways on that walkway. Because everyone was out enjoying the beauty, topography, etc.

Side note #2: there’s apparently a big business in Santorini that involves women renting beautiful, boldly-colored dresses, standing on prominent points that feature the classic “white building blue dome” background scenery, and having their photos professionally taken as a photographer’s assistant tosses the very long train of the dress up to catch the breeze. Examples. The photos are definitely one of a kind! We saw these types of packages advertised all over the place, and during sunset and sunrise you see many groups out doing this. At first I thought there we just lots of weddings happening where someone had an interested in a bold multi-color palate!

Tourists and touristy things aside, we very much enjoyed our stay on Santorini. We did the hike from Thera (“fear-ah”) to Oia (“ee-ah”), took a catamaran trip past the multi-colored cliffs and across the caldera, went wine tasting with a view of the caldera, and tried a variety of traditional Santorini foods. We also met up with Stefan as he was in the middle of his own Greece odyssey, and together went to a rooftop restaurant, had a great beach hopping day, and visited Ancient Thera.

Ancient Thera in particular is definitely worth the effort. It’s located on top of the mountain that makes up the Northeast part of the island, on top of a road that has many steep switchbacks. The site is at least 3/4 of a mile long, and probably 1/4 mile at its widest – impressively large, and full edge to edge with the remains of a very prosperous city from way back when.

Our second water taxi-facilitated multi-beach day of the trip involved a short hike to the red sand beach under a crumbly cliff, a water-approach-only to a white sand beach with a big swim-through rock out in the very calm water, and a short stay on a black sand beach as well. Super fun and unique day.

On the way home we stopped in Zurich for the night, which has direct flights to/from both Santorini and Denver, and got to see Claire and Yves! We also serendipitously ran into Jill and Peyton again in the Zurich airport, so we got to spend another lovely hour with them hearing all about their adventure across the Greek mainland.

Memorable times!