Santornini Day 4 -5 Favorites

The last of the honeymoon pictures... oh so memorable!

Santorini Day 5 - Museums, wine tasting, our last day in Greece

Saturday, our last day in Greece, we decided to visit the museums that we'd missed due to their crazy hours and strikes.  We started out with another excellent self-catered breakfast out on the terrace.  Then we headed down the familiar foot path to Fira.  It was another nice day, so we took it leisurely, and stopped to take in the views and take a lot of photos along the way.

The first museum we went to is the fairly lackluster old Archaeological Museum.  I'm not even sure this one is worth going to...  It's just a single hall with mostly pre-historic ceramics, nothing much to look at, and poor presentation at that.  As one of the guidebooks said, it really is no match for the newer state of the art Museum of Prehistoric Thera, where we headed next.  The Museum of Prehistoric Thera is really awesome by comparison. Here, the layout here is well done, and the descriptions and explanations are well written and compelling.  Just about anyone can find themselves engrossed in the story told by the exhibits.  There are a number of the ancient wall paintings here, lots of household items, and a gold ibex figurine.

After the museum, we headed to Nikolas Tavern were we had another excellent Greek salad and some fried cod for lunch.  After lunch, we headed to the bus depot again to catch a bus to Santo Wines, a sort of consortium of wine growers on the island.  The facility at Santo wines is really something, they have a huge terrace built up with amazing views of both the caldera and Fira.  We ordered a sampler platter with cheese and breads.  Though the cheese cubes were good, we didn't quite understand the toasts. They were were rock hard, break your teeth hard.  There were six wines to sample and our favorite was the Vinsanto, a dessert wine, for which Santorini is famous (it is made with sun dried grapes/raisins).

We took the bus back to Fira and then set out on a quest to pick up a few more souvenirs before dinner.  We got to do one more walk through of the streets of Fira and stopped for a crepe as well.  There are not too many dessert type places, but we were able to find a few. The place we got the crepe didn't have lemon, so we got chocolate instead.

We bounced around through various souvenir shops, looking for a couple of items that we'd been eying since we'd been in Santorini but just hadn't picked up yet.  One thing we found was a lovely silk pillow cover, which we'd put off buying until we found the lowest price.  Many if not most of the souvenir shops share a good chunk of their inventory, but not necessarily their prices.  So if you shop around, you can often find the same item for cheaper at another shop.  Other items are a little more one of kind.  We decided to buy some sponges (real sponges) for my nieces and nephew, since we'd seen them play with the synthetic kind back home.  Kids toys are hard to come by where most stuff sold is jewelry.  We got the sponges from a guy who had a bunch of baskets of sponges out on a terrace that we'd seen many times.  He tried to sell us on some "top quality" sponges that would "last forever."  Once we noticed the bargain bin of cheaper, smaller sponges, we knew what we wanted, and I tried to explain to him that the intended recipients, kids, wouldn't know or care the difference.

We thought it fitting to have dinner at the place nearby our hotel that served us our first Santorini dinner.  But Aktaion doesn't open until 7pm, after the sunset, so we got to watch another brilliant sunset, this time from Firostephani.  Lots of other people showed up to take pictures as well and we helped several people take family photos and the like.  Just as the sunset was finishing, we took a table outside at Aktaion, which proved to be a bit chilly once the wind picked up.  We ordered their Santorini salad, pasta, and a piece of lemon cake for dessert.

We headed back to the hotel to rest up for our early 6:55am flight the next day.  24 hours (from 6:55am) of flights and layovers back home to Salt Lake!

Thanks everyone for following our blog for our honeymoon! We will have one last post of favorite pictures and then on to more adventure!

Santorini Day 4 - Ancient Thira, Sunset in Oia

The weather in the morning on Friday was finally good enough to utilize our terraces for breakfast.  I made my typical bread/feta/oil/oregano combo, and we both had cereal.  We also had orange juice and mini chocolate filled croissants.  The terrace was comfy, and quiet, and had nice views of the sea.

Having missed the cutoff time for the ruins the day before, we headed down early to the bus depot.  After the typical confusion at the bus station, we found the right bus and were on our way to Kamari.  From the bus stop in Kamari, there are excursion mini-buses that take you up to the ruins of Ancient Thira.  You can walk as well, but it's a very long and steep way up.  The 10 euros for the mini-bus was well worth it.  The mini-bus driver was very funny and it was always amusing when we passed tourists in rental cars on their way down.  The road is more of a sidewalk in both construction and width, so you can imagine what passing is like.  Luckily the cars and mini-buses are very small.

Ancient Thira is the number two attraction on the island, right behind Ancient Akrotiri, but Ancient Akrotiri has been closed for several years now following a fatal roof collapse in 2005.  Ancient Thira dates from the 9th century B.C. with most buildings dating from the 4th century (B.C.).  This is in contrast to the much older bronze age ruins at Ancient Akrotiri, the settlement that was abandoned and destroyed/preserved by the volcanic eruption between 1600-1500 B.C., the eruption that made the island the shape that it is today.  Back to Ancient Thira... this location, at the very top of the hill at the south east part of the island, must have been a great defense point, along with having a fantastic view, but all we could think about is the 1+ hour hike up (or down) that the inhabitants must have had to get food and water.  These folks must have been in top notch shape and been excellent hikers.  The ruins themselves are much like many of the others we've seen.  There is evidence of plumbing, always amazing, and the number of buildings is always amazing.  There are some well preserved frescos even.  The view from Ancient Thira is wonderful and at this point, we were very glad to have been delayed by a day in coming here, because we would have seen nothing but clouds and fog on the previous day.  Today however, the visibility was great.  We could see islands that we couldn't see on previous days.  It was best day for weather so far.

We took the mini-bus down the mountain, saving us time and wear on our feet.  At Kamira, there is a lovely black sand beach.  Being a volcanic island, most of the beaches here are black sand.  The black sand gets very hot in the sun.  Again, we were glad to be here on such a nice day.  Before heading to the beach, we tried to find one of the guidebook recommended lunch spots and we ended up at a place called Amalthia.  At Amalthia, we got a nice Santorini salad and then ordered the mixed grill.  The mixed grill, took forever and a half to make and when it arrived, we were greeted by way too much meat, just way too much, and most of it, not even that good.  When we left, through a different entry, we saw the signs for the seafood grill, and another special, both of which appealed more to us, but weren't posted at the entrance we'd come through!  Grrr.....

After lunch, we headed down to the beach.  The water here was decent, temperature wise, but was quite rocky, hard on the feet, and not as clear as we'd found on Rhodes.  Santorini isn't known for its beaches, but they are ok.  The waves here were much stronger than the two beaches we'd been to on Rhodes.  We found ourselves being tossed by big waves after going in only a little bit.  It was pretty fun.  Anyway, after getting out of the water, we dried off in the sun for a bit on our hotel-borrowed towels.  And after drying off, we headed back to the bus station to catch the bus back to Fira, and then took another bus that heads to Oia and got off at the stop about 100 feet from our hotel in Firostephani.

After showering to get the ocean and ocean bits off of us, we took a late afternoon break and then got dressed for our fancy sunset dinner in Oia, where the sunsets are supposed to be the most spectacular, and this being the best day for visibility so far, we were extra excited to see it.  We'd had our hotel make reservations for us at a nice place that they recommended.  So we went out and caught the bus to Oia.

We arrived in Oia (pronounced "ee-uh") about an hour before our reservation and spent some time walking through it.  Oia is most picturesque town on the island, and probably the most photographed, but it's not much different from Fira and Firostephani.  At the point of the town/island, there's an old castle, and dozens of people, many with mountains of camera equipment were already setting up shop to watch

We went up to our restaurant, Kastro, a little before our reservation time, and sat down to look at the menu.  This was our sunset dinner in place of a sunset dinner cruise that we didn't go for on account of the weather and wind.  The food here was excellent, and the view even better.  For dinner, we had an appetizer of stuffed olives, deep fried, so so good.  Then a very good Greek salad, very nice.  For the main dish, we were disappointed to not find any seafood on the menu (strange here on an island in the sea), so we ordered a beef steak, which was pretty good, but which I can do better. :)  For dessert, we had baklava, very nice, very sweet, served warm with ice cream.

The sunset here was definitely amazing, and the crowds of people who turned up for it were at times overwhelming.  A guy 30 feet away from us with a giant camera and giant tripod was taking about 30 shots (auto-fire) every 1-20 minutes.  People come from all over the world to take pictures of this sunset.  There were some boats down in the sea, and we could see them taking pictures of us (since we could see their flashes!).

After dinner, we headed back to the bus depot and waited (and waited) for the bus to finally come.  I don't know if they were 20 minutes late, or if they'd changed the schedule again, but we did finally make it on the bus and made it back to our stop right by our hotel.

Rhodes Day 4 - Santorini Day 3 Favorites

Yippee! More pics! We only have a couple more posts and then we are all caught up. :)

Santorini Day 3

Thursday morning was quite windy. We had to eat our breakfast inside rather than out on the terrace as we'd planned. It was both windy and foggy, with small periods of rain, so we decided to relax for a bit in our hotel room. Once the weather improved, we headed down to Fira to walk around for a bit to check things out.

We decided to head to the bus station to catch a bus to Kamira to see the ruins of Ancient Thira. But before doing so, headed to find lunch at Nikolas Tavern in Fira. For lunch we had a greek salad and some unexpectedly good chicken souvlaki. Then we rushed off to catch the bus to Kamira only to hear the station operator tell us that Ancient Thira closes at 2pm (we should have noticed that our guidebook says the same thing).

So we headed back towards Firostefani, climing all the steps for the second or third time of many to come. Along the way we stopped at the Nomikos Conference Center where the current exhibit is the "Wall Paintings of Thera" (http://www.santonet.gr/exhibitions/nomikos.htm).

This exhibit houses sophisicated 3d replicas of the wall paintings found at Akrotiri, the pre 1600 b.c. eruption city of the island of Santorini. We had seen a few of the originals in the Archeological Museum in Athens, and some others are in the Museum of Prehistoric Thera in Fira, but one of the neat things about the exhibition is that you can see them all in one place and there are replicas of several that are not available to the public anywhere. The method used to replicate the wall paintings is very cool; they take stereo images and create a topography of the painting so that they can recreate every bump and crack. Then they construct the canvas based on this and transfer photographic emulsions onto this synthetic substrate.

After leaving the exhibition, we headed back up toward Firostefani for dinner. We stopped in at Mama Thira again and were well pleased with their Santorini salad and sea bass.

Santorini Day 2

The weather continued to be cold, foggy, and down right weird on our second day in Santorini. We were socked in and it was so sad because we knew that the blue waters were there surrounding us. We were both a bit tired so we spent the morning and early afternoon just hanging out in the room, downloading pictures, and writing post cards.

We finally emerged long enough to walk around a bit and grab a bite at Mama Thira's. We found reviews for a place called Mama's so we thought this was it. They don't have formal addresses in Santorini so we found it a bit difficult at first to find anything. It is a small enough town/island though that we figured it out quick enough.

Mama Thira's was a quiet place with great food. The Santorini salad (a bit of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, croutons, and big capers) was the best salad of the entire trip! We also had a nice pork dish, a tasty sauce with peppers. The decor is simple but nice, they have 3 wreaths hanging on their wall. These are the wreaths that they wrap the wine grapes in to protect them from the wind. We saw the grapes wrapped up all over the island. They are really beautiful.

We walked around more. The wind whipped around us and the fog clung to the steep cliff walls. We decided to go to a restaurant for dinner that was in our guide book. Naoussa is the name. This place was packed and we have no idea why. The noise was awful, the food was also bad, and there was no view, just walls. Bleck! Even the reviews online were ok for this place. Very strange.

Santorini Day 1

Early morning Tuesday, Kevin and Laurel flew back from Rhodes.  Their flight was so early (7am) that they didn't even have time for breakfast.  Misty and I slept in a bit and had a leisurely breakfast, since our flight wasn't until the afternoon.  Taking a late breakfast meant that everyone else in the hotel was there, so it was a bit annoying.  After breakfast, we packed up our luggage and then strolled through Old Town to take care of a few errands such as buying some stamps, going to the ATM.  Then we headed back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and made the trek to the bus station to save some money vs. taxi or the hotel's driver.  The bus station was a little more difficult to find that we had hoped, and we went passed it by quite a ways and had to double back.

We flew from Rhodes to Athens, with a couple hour layover in Athens, and then from Athens to Santorini.  Each flight was about an hour and they both went quickly.  Security at both Rhodes and Athens (yes, you have to go through again), was a joke as usual.  The flights went fine, and quick.

When we got to Santorini, there was thick fog everywhere.  We heard from other people staying at the hotel that later flights were having trouble landing and were potentially going to have to turn back to Athens.  By the time we got to our hotel and got situated, it was completely socked in with no visibility, and with fog so thick that we could see the power lines sparking with the moisture.  We headed out for a late dinner and found a great meal at a little place called Aktaion.  They had one of the best Greek salads we had on the entire trip.  For the main dish we had pasta.