Santorini Visit
Due to both of my kids coming with us to Greece this year, we decided to do something special and spend a few days in Santorini. My wife and I had been to Santorini for our honey moon almost thirty years ago and had very fond memories of the island. Santorini is a very special island. It was a volcano that erupted in the 16th century BC. Some of the main towns are built on the cliffs of what remains of the volcano that is now mostly underwater. Our place was on one of the cliffs with amazing views as you can see from the picture. Santorini today is somewhat overwhelmed by foreign tourists including those stopping by via cruise ships and as a result is not a popular destination for Greeks. Most of my Greek friends were actually appalled when I told them I was going there. The claim is that the island is too crowded by tourists, extremely expensive, not authentic, and full of businesses trying to take advantage of tourists. I was worried about that but our experience ended up being amazing and well beyond my expectations (maybe because of all of the negative comments). We did do a few things to mitigate the overcrowding and the cost. We decided to avoid visiting in July and August which are the peeks of the tourist season (we visited in late June). We decided to stay 20 minutes or so outside of the main town towards the beaches we wanted to try. We also stayed in a small house that was well separated from other establishments and as a result we didn’t experience any of the overcrowding. We were only 10-15 minutes away from the beaches which were also not very crowded. We only visited the capital of the island (Fira) and Oia (a very popular town) on a single day and so we didn’t run into the large crowds of tourists outside of that day.
We did make a significant investment on the place we stayed (and as a result we limited our visit to the island to four days). We rented a house on what is called Caldera. It’s hard to describe in words and you have to experience it. Our place had an amazing view as you can see in the pictures. The views is what makes Santorini so special and you do have to get a place that has such a view for your visit to be worth the effort. The view of the sunset from our place was unbelievable and an experience we will never forget.
The beaches in Santorini are interesting and unique but nothing close to some of the amazing beaches on other Greek islands. Our favorite was probably the red beach. It is very unique as you can see from the picture but requires a little bit of hiking. We lucked out with parking and got a great spot which reduced the walk and maybe made it a bit more enjoyable. The beach was the most crowded beach we visited but it still felt ok and there were not that many people in the water so swimming was not a problem. We visited a couple of beaches from the black variety (the majority of beaches in Santorini). They were nice but nothing special in my opinion having visited many beautiful beaches in Greece and abroad. Those beaches were not crowded at all.
We cooked food at our place a couple of times to reduce cost and avoid crowds but we did go to a couple of restaurants but made sure to stay away from the main towns. We went to the nearby town of Megalochori which was a lot less crowded than the main town and tried a restaurant called Avlogyros. It was pretty enjoyable. We also went to a restaurant called the Cave of Nikolas in Akrotiri. We were told this is one of the best restaurants in Santorini. It definitely lived up to the expectations. The fish we tried was exceptional and surprisingly the prices were very affordable and comparable to other islands (contrary to what I was expecting). The set up was also pretty nice and our table was next to the sea. All in all a very memorable experience.
We did go to Thira and Oia (the two main towns in Santorini). Thira is nothing particularly special except for the occasional beautiful views. It’s full of the typical tourist shops, very crowded, very commercialized, and not with any distinct character. Oia is more interesting. We had fond memories of it from our last visit but it has also become overbuilt, overcrowded, and very commercialized. We were warned that parking would be impossible but we didn’t have trouble in either towns parking at the designated parking lots at the edge of town. The sunset in Oia is very popular and attracts a lot of tourists but the sunset from our place was much more interesting and enjoyable so it didn’t feel like anything special to us.
