THE Adventure - Santorini

From Heraklion we took the big red Vodafone boat to get to Santorini. I remembered seeing these the last time I was in Greece with Jonathan, and since they were the fast boats, assumed they were better.


I didn't know how wrong I was until about 10 minutes into the ride. We had the first class cabin because that was all that was available, so our seats were pretty cushy, but once we hit open waters, I knew I was not going to keep my breakfast. When the boat started rocking, it kept on rocking (+/- 2 feet from where it should have been) until we hit Santorini. So, of course, the first thing we do when we get there is get this wonderful drug called Dramamine. It really is a beautiful thing.

When we hit the dock we got tickets to Oia (pronounced "EE-uh"), and after a couple of hours (layover at the main city of Thira), we were at the idyllic mediterranean city famous for its blue-domed roofs. Our directions to our "hotel" were basically to ask around for Restaurant Lotza, and from there they would take us to our house. We found this place from oldoiahouses.gr, and it's a group of 15 or so old houses--the old-syle cave houses--that are rented out for days or even weeks at a time. It was facing in towards the center of the caldera so we had an excellent view of Thira and the active part of the volcano.

Our porch for the evening.

After showering we went to explore our little village.

Mini photo-shoot of Matt

In Oia, there is only one place to be at sunset, so of course all of the tourists from the island come here to watch.

It took a few tries to get the flash and shutter speed to cooperate and get the correct exposure

View of Thira from our window

A picture of the sunset point during the day

Yes, the city is THAT beautiful

A random doorway

We ran into a couple other photographers and they were kind enough to take our picture

Since the whole island of Santorini is a caldera, the cities are set at the top of the island, but to get to the ports you have to walk down a stepped path with lots of switchbacks.

A look back up at Oia from one of the switchbacks

The dock at the bottom of Oia

You'd think they just put this stuff here for tourists, but no, everything is just that colorful

A classic blue dome

A delicious restaurant with a great view, though it's hard to NOT have a great view here!

Santorini was just a time for us to relax, take pictures, get a little base tan, and just take in the beauty. Our only night there, instead of going out to eat, we got sausage, pasta and tomato sauce and made our own dinner after sunset, and it was just what we needed. The following day we were able to hang out at the house for a while until we had to make our way back to the port and catch our boat (before which we were sure to take our dramamine) to go to Athens.

So next stop, Athens!