We have now had our last night in Santorini. We were enjoying ourselves so much we got an extra night, but we had to change hotels.
Luckily the new hotel has a pool over looking the Caldera! Very nice!
We went for another look around Oia and then spent most of yesterday afternoon and night by the pool, reading, drinking cocktails and swimming. Now we are getting ready for the flights back home. Dammit! One night in Athens, then a long flight back to Singapore, where we will have 3 days to spend the rest of our holiday money and then home.
We both don't want to leave Santorini, but are looking forward to home (except work!).
Some more photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/fergusm/SantoriniDay5
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Santorini Day 3 & 4
Yesterday we hired a tiny little car so we could investigate the island. There are 2 main tourist beaches, the black beach and red beach, named from the sand colour. We drove to Perissa, and the black beach. The scenery was nice as we drove along dodging people riding 4 wheelers, scooters, motorbikes and buggies.
The beach has a nice setup (very tourist oriented) with permanent straw umbrellas, sun lounges and tables. You pick where you want to setup and then rent the umbrella for the day (7 euro). The sand gets really, really hot because of the colour, so you have to wear your thongs right to the waters edge.
The beach is nothing like Aussie beaches. So far we haven't seen any waves while in Europe. It's almost like swimming in a lake (actually I've seen lakes in Australia with bigger waves!). We didn't plan on staying very long, but lying on a nice lounge with waiters serving you drinks etc.. it became hard to leave! A group of people (Thai I think) walk around offering massages. Eventually we gave in and had one each (why not). Fantastic. We were so relaxed lying there reading we forgot about lunch until about 4:30pm! We got some tasty traditional Greek food brought over to our umbrella.
After some more swimming and relaxing we decided to explore the island some more and drove over to the red beach. It is less tourist oriented as you have to walk around a cliff from the car park to get there, but they still have lounges to hire.
We then drove to the opposite end of the island to Oia (30 mins or so). It has much more traditional buildings than Thira, and is well advertised as the best spot to watch the sunset. So we parked and then joined hundreds of tourists taking photos around the town and of the sunset. After a while walking around we found a seat at a bar to have a cocktail and watch/photo the sunset.
Once again I got carried away with too many photos.
We drove back after the sun had set (to the applause of the crowd) and sat on our balcony drinking a few too many gin & tonics.
Today we took things a little more slowly, and headed back to the beach, because it was so nice and relaxing! The bus only costs 2 euro to get to the beach and is actually a nice air conditioned coach. So all we've done all day is lie on sun lounges, read books, swim, eat and drink. Perfect!
More photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/fergusm/SantoriniDay3
The beach has a nice setup (very tourist oriented) with permanent straw umbrellas, sun lounges and tables. You pick where you want to setup and then rent the umbrella for the day (7 euro). The sand gets really, really hot because of the colour, so you have to wear your thongs right to the waters edge.
The beach is nothing like Aussie beaches. So far we haven't seen any waves while in Europe. It's almost like swimming in a lake (actually I've seen lakes in Australia with bigger waves!). We didn't plan on staying very long, but lying on a nice lounge with waiters serving you drinks etc.. it became hard to leave! A group of people (Thai I think) walk around offering massages. Eventually we gave in and had one each (why not). Fantastic. We were so relaxed lying there reading we forgot about lunch until about 4:30pm! We got some tasty traditional Greek food brought over to our umbrella.
After some more swimming and relaxing we decided to explore the island some more and drove over to the red beach. It is less tourist oriented as you have to walk around a cliff from the car park to get there, but they still have lounges to hire.
We then drove to the opposite end of the island to Oia (30 mins or so). It has much more traditional buildings than Thira, and is well advertised as the best spot to watch the sunset. So we parked and then joined hundreds of tourists taking photos around the town and of the sunset. After a while walking around we found a seat at a bar to have a cocktail and watch/photo the sunset.
Once again I got carried away with too many photos.
We drove back after the sun had set (to the applause of the crowd) and sat on our balcony drinking a few too many gin & tonics.
Today we took things a little more slowly, and headed back to the beach, because it was so nice and relaxing! The bus only costs 2 euro to get to the beach and is actually a nice air conditioned coach. So all we've done all day is lie on sun lounges, read books, swim, eat and drink. Perfect!
More photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/fergusm/SantoriniDay3
More Santorini (Day 2)
We've now been here 3 nights and love it here. I've been taking 1000's of photos. Too hard to choose which ones to show here, so I'm trying to upload them (1 day at a time).
On our first full day in Santorini we woke up to the lovely breakfast on our balcony. Then we went for a walk around Thira (pronounced Fira) and took lots of photos of the unique Greek Island architecture. There are so many churches/chapels with the domed roofs, either painted blue or white.
That afternoon we booked ourselves on a cruise on a sailboat. It took us out to the volcano (not active, but still smoking), and then for a 30 minute hike to the top. The loose rocks make going difficult. After the volcano they sailed round to a smaller island that has a hot spring for a swim off the boat. The hot spring wasn't very hot but the water was lovely anyway. I got a bit crazy and jumped off the high side of the boat. Lots of fun!
Then we sailed around looking at the other islands and towns, while eating some yummy greek snack food and drinking wine. After sailing over to the northern end of Santorini (Oia pronounced Ia) they raised the sails and turned off the motor so we could sail with the sunset behind us and one of the sailors got out his saxophone. Lovely!
As you can imagine I got a bit carried away taking lots of photos...
I'm just trying to upload 55 photos from the day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/fergusm/SantoriniDay2
On our first full day in Santorini we woke up to the lovely breakfast on our balcony. Then we went for a walk around Thira (pronounced Fira) and took lots of photos of the unique Greek Island architecture. There are so many churches/chapels with the domed roofs, either painted blue or white.
That afternoon we booked ourselves on a cruise on a sailboat. It took us out to the volcano (not active, but still smoking), and then for a 30 minute hike to the top. The loose rocks make going difficult. After the volcano they sailed round to a smaller island that has a hot spring for a swim off the boat. The hot spring wasn't very hot but the water was lovely anyway. I got a bit crazy and jumped off the high side of the boat. Lots of fun!
Then we sailed around looking at the other islands and towns, while eating some yummy greek snack food and drinking wine. After sailing over to the northern end of Santorini (Oia pronounced Ia) they raised the sails and turned off the motor so we could sail with the sunset behind us and one of the sailors got out his saxophone. Lovely!
As you can imagine I got a bit carried away taking lots of photos...
I'm just trying to upload 55 photos from the day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/fergusm/SantoriniDay2
