Sensational, Stunning Santorini

  Perissa, Cyclades, Greece
Thursday, August 7, 2008

What a sight!

We arrived to Santorini by ferry, an hour and a half late.  This is completely standard we are told and find oursleves wondering why they don't just change the time schedule to match the actual departure and arrival times.  I suppose that would simply make the ferry arrive even later. 

When we got off the ferry, we each had our heavy, full packs on, as well as our day packs and also a bag or two of groceries and snacks gathered throughout our time on Crete.  Immediately we, along with other travellors were bomboarded by hoards of local hotel owners vying for customers.  They were holding signs with the names of their hotels and were hollering out the location and special qualities each had to offer.  We didn't have a sniff as to where we were going or staying and apparently this was blatantly obvious as we were soon surrounded by about 6 or 7 sign waving, quick talking owners.  There was a Clueless Tourist Parade here and we were at the front waving the batons.

One owner was especially pushy as he relentlessly thrust his hotel pamphlet in our faces and jabbed at the pictures with a sticky finger attached to a dirty hand clutching an icecream.  The slurping of the dairy treat right next to our ears, the continual badgering and the ever-nearing danger of being smucked with melting icecream made our minds up that we would rather do any of the following than stay at his particular hotel:

     1)  Carve our eye out with a spoon.
     2)  Give an elephant a rectal exam.
     3)  Lick a cactus.
     4)  Pee on an electrical fence
     5)  Poop out hot ashes.

I think you get the point. 

We eventually got away from the cramped crowd and were trying to gather our thoughts when we were approached by a single local man, fairly small and wearing a straw-like cowboy hat.  He had a sort of twinkle in his eye when he smiled that reminded us of friendly Turkey.  He was very kind and soft-spoken and ended up winning us over and we got a free ride to his hotel in the town of Perissa.  It was a nice little hotel and we were pleased to have a TV with 1 or 2 English channels as well as a fridge.  The swimming pool was huge and clean and we were just under a 10 minute walk away from the beach.  Perfect.

02. Our Hotel

We settled in, bought some groceries for our fridge and took off to the beach.

The beach we went to was very nice.  It was a black sand beach.  It wasn't acutally sand, but very very small rocks that nearly felt like sand.  The only drawback was that in the 40+ weather, the sand was pretty much scorching and nearly impossible to cross in bare feet.  It was a mad dash to the water to avoid scorching the soles of our feet.  The water was very nice as well.  Clear and cool and just right. 

Once we had enough of the beach, we took a bus to Fira.  Santorini has an unusal bussing system.  No matter where you are on the island and no matter where you want to go, if you are taking the bus, you must first head to Fira and then get a bus to the location you want to go.  It would be like thinking of Red Deer College, Parkland Mall and Bower Mall as three different towns on the island.  If you were staying at RDC (Perissa) and wanted to go to Bower Mall (Kamari), you would first have to take a bus to Parkland Mall (Fira) and then catch another one back to Bower Mall. 

Fira is the capital city of Santorini and has some amazing sites along the cliffsides as you walk along the caldera.  Santorini is so spectacularly beautiful that it really leaves you speechless.  The caldera is a vast wall of multi-coloured cliffs that is truly awesome.  It is a really stupendous landscape.  The white buildings, churches and restaurants that line the cliffsides shine brightly in the sun and they at night they create a frozen cascade of lights. We walked around Fira and took in the amazing sites.  We also walked to Firastefani about 1.5km north for even more sites overlooking the sea and the beautiful island.

07. Trevor at Santorini

That night we decided to head up to Oia to watch the sunset. We took a bus (to Fira first) and then hopped on another one North to Oia.  Oia was just as spectacular as Fira. 

29. Old and New

It was so devastated by an earthquake in 1956, that it became somewhat of a ghost town.  You can't tell that anymore, as it has many restuarants and shops to wander amongst.  It is built on volcanic rock and get s more sunset time than Fira.  We ended  enjoying an incredible supper on a rooftop restaurant with a great view of the sunset.  

39. Supper View

We did not stay for the entire sunset as we wanted to get a spot right along the cliffsides to watch the sun disappear.  Oia is made up of narrow walkways and these were completely packed and crowed with hundreds of people searching out a perfect spot to watch the orange sky.  Luckily for us, we had scoped the whole area out earlier, and had a location in mind already just off the main path to ensure our pictures did not have strangers heads in them.  We squished and shimmied our way down the paths and walkways and found our spot down some stairs and around a small curving corner.  There were only a handful of others there when we arrived and we got front row viewing.  We will leave the rest to the pictures.  The sunset ended with applause. 

The following day, we headed to Kamari.  It was a more relaxing day as we had walked so much the day before.  This was a resort town with a beach that was not nearly as nice as ours, but it did have an Open Air Theatre.  

64. Open Air Theatre Sign

This was great.  We headed to the theatre at 9:00pm and were sitting watching a New Release by 9:30.  The theatre was surrounded by thick trees.  There was a screen at the front and people sat on chairs much like a 'directors' chair from hollywood.  There was a bar at the back that sold drinks and snacks - including *popcorn!*  The only ceiling over our heads was a dark sky with the stars sparkling above us. 

We loved Santorini and will leave you with the rest of the pictures to show you what it was like.   

Hugs and Love,
Dana and Trevor