Santorini – a place you’ll never forget

Hi guys! For my 1st post I really wanted to share with you how I started traveling on my own and how this soon became my newest passion.

So, I got married in June 2016 yaaay ^^ and I wanted something special for our honeymoon that was meant to be in July. But what can be more special and super fancy and romantic than beautiful Santorini? I really bet nothing.

Husband totally agreed because we both loooove Greece. For us, Greece is like a second home. We are visiting Greece for so many years, husband’s sister is living in Chalkida, a wonderful city next to Athens and we are visiting her every summer.

By the way, we also have great memories that bind us to Greece. Husband asked me to marry him at Meteora on those spectacular cliffs. I am a lucky girl, I know. It was perfect!

We did not want to go alone on our honeymoon. Strange right? We thought it would be more fun if we had someone else with us as well. Therefore, our greek nephew and my lovely cousin came with us.

We’ve booked our Ryanair flights to Athens, met our nephew there and early in the morning we had our flight to Santorini, which lasted only 35 minutes.

I have to tell you, all my trips until now were traveling by car, so it was a totally new experience for me to fly. Well, my mom took me to Timisoara (a city in Romania) by plane when I was 2 years old so this doesn’t count. Therefore, imagine this double enthusiasm, Santorini and flying. I remember, I couldn’t even sleep properly the night before haha.

During the flight, I was looking at all the islands I could see and wonder myself which one is Santorini. I’ve read that Santorini is a small island, but did not imagine it was THAT small though. The total land area is 90 km²

Because the airport in Santorini is veeery small and it only has one landing track, the pilot had to turn the plane 180° and I really thought we’re gonna land into the water. But everything turned out to be just fine, of course haha.

After we landed, we took a bus to Fira, the capital of Santorini. We stayed at Summer Time Villa (rated as “Fabulous 8.8” on Booking), which was indeed very clean, super nice + a jacuzzi on the terrace. Awesome right? It was an apartment with 2 rooms, bathroom and balcony, air conditioning and wifi. No spectacular view though. For this you should book a luxury hotel and we can all imagine the prices. We are not that rich lol.

The price for the entire apartment was 480 Euros and we stayed 3 nights. This means 40 Euros each per night. Not expensive at all. So this is the proof that you can travel on a budget in Santorini too.

We wanted to stay 4 nights and have 5 full days, however I somehow managed to buy wrong tickets. Stupid me, I know. We had the tickets for our flight back in Athens at 12.35 at midnight and I messed up the dates. I was really sad about that but I’ve booked another 2 nights stay in Athens, after leaving Santorini, so it was ok in the end because we visited Athens as well. Although, I would have never ever left Santorini. Like NEVER EVER.

Ok so we left our bags at the reception, by the way the lady who greeted us at Summer Time Villa was very very nice and helpful. She gave us a map and explained how we can reach every important location on this beautiful island.

We started our DAY 1 by having breakfast at a restaurant nearby, the accommodation being really close to city center. Funny thing, the girl who served our breakfast was Romanian too.

After we finished our breakfast, we started wandering the area and looked for a rental scooter or ATV as they are commonly referred to on Santorini. Thanks to our greek nephew, we had a discount and rented 2 ATVs, each one of them for 20 Euros per day, as far as I remember. I think it was a good price.

On this day we’ve been to Perissa Beach, a black sand beach. I can tell you this, Santorini does not have good beaches because it is a volcanic island. So this is a minus. However, almost all the accommodations have pools. So don’t worry.

At night, we found an amazing spot, before entering Firostefani. The thing I liked the most in Santorini is that the pretty towns were really close to each other and could easily visit most of them. If you want, you can reach all of them in one day, by car or ATV of course.

Ok so we found this big terrace, bought some wine, some glasses and please take a look below to see what a wonderful view we had.

Amazing right? We’ve been there every night. It was perfect! Drinking some wine, listening to the sea, watching the moon, enjoying this view and not having to sit in a fancy crowded restaurant. Because Santorini is really crowded in July, trust me.

But what did we eat in Santorini? If you thought there are only expensive restaurants, well the answer is no. There are a lot of tiny restaurants that serve Gyros at a very good price. With 5 Euros you can eat a Gyro and have a Mythos beer as well. And this was in Fira, which is known as being more expensive than the other little towns, being the capital. Again, not expensive at all.

DAY 2. We visited Oia. When you think of Santorini, you must imagine that beautiful scenery with those windmills and white houses. Well, that’s Oia. However, Fira looks quite the same and most of the towns look the same, as well. But Oia is being the most popular. Maybe because Angelina Jolie filmed Lara Croft Tomb Raider there. Oh and she also bought her own villa in Oia.

Me “modeling” and husband being a photographer. Pretty good?

Watching the sunset in Oia is also very popular and a must-do. For this we went to Amoudi Bay which is below Oia and found a nice place to enjoy the sunset. There is also a terrace upstairs in Oia where we could’ve done this but it was very crowded of course, so we didn’t stay there.

And the sunset-checked ✓

On our way back to Fira, husband was driving the ATV and we almost died. No kidding. We could have literally died. We skidded into a curve and hit the… MOUNTAIN. Yeah! We sure had some thrills then and seriously, be careful with those ATVs because they’re not very stable.

On DAY 3, husband and I woke up pretty early in the morning and went for a walk without nephew and cousin, because we wanted to wander those beautiful narrow white streets without having them complaining about the heat and the hiking. No offence guys if you are reading this^^

So we walked from Fira to Imerovigli, strolling around those magical streets and stopping every 5 m to admire the view again and again.

WAIT! But first, coffee. I mean FRAPPÉ. Greeks are mad about Frappés, they are drinking them in the morning, noon, afternoon. They just drink it all the time.

Oh and hello lazy cat, you have such a horrible life here, aren’t you? I know, I can’t even imagine how hard it is to live here every day. Poor you!

After we finished our 2 hours walk we went straight ahead finding a place where we could eat something, because we were staaarving. In the meantime, cousin and nephew went to the Red Beach.

We’ve met them there. And guess what, Red Beach was really spectacular. This beach earned its name from its reddish volcanic sand. We had to go down to the beach by some chains in some parts of the road. But it totally worth the effort as you may see below.

On our way to Red Beach, found this beautiful blue door in Akrotiri. Isn’t this just wonderful?

And on our way back from Akrotiri found this spot with this amazing view. However, there are tons of beautiful spots with this kind of view in Santorini, they’re everywhere!

By sunset, we’ve stopped at a super cute restaurant with a caldera view and we had there some pasta and red wine. But not any red wine, we drank Vinsanto. This wine has been produced there since ancient times (I’ve googled this). The Italian influence is still present in modern Santorini winemaking: the most famous tuscan sweet wine is called Vin Santo. The Santorini’s Vin Santo (labeled here and officially as “Vinsanto” to disclaim it from the homonym Tuscan wine) is made in a passito style from grapes dried in the sun after harvest. The wine was super good but quite expensive though. As I recall, a small glass of wine, you can almost call it a shot haha, costs around 9-10 Euros.

DAY 4 was our last day here. We relaxed at the jacuzzi, ate another Gyro and drank another Mythos beer. Afterwards we went to a very nice restaurant to enjoy our last Santorini sunset.

Aaaand I think we drank another Mythos and ate another Gyro before we left at midnight haha. We ate really lots of Gyros during our stay. Guilty as charged! The good thing was we could leave our bags at the reception all day even though the check-out was in the morning. So another plus for Summer Time Villa.

Below is the volcano which is responsible for creating this beautiful island. Although at present dormant, it has been active several times in historic time. Since its last major explosive eruption (at about 1645 BC) numerous minor and medium-sized, mainly effusive eruptions have occurred. This activity built the dark-colored islands of Nea and Palea Kameni inside the caldera. The last eruption on Nea Kameni occurred in 1950.

So half an hour after midnight we were heading back to Athens where we stayed another 2 days in a super cute apartment. After that, we went to husband’s sister in Chalkida and enjoyed one more week of beautiful Greece.

It was quite fun writing this post because I realized I managed to remember all these beautiful moments and I am very happy I could share them with you ^^

Until next time,

Andreea.

• Our stay in Santorini: 11.07.2016 – 15.07.2016
• Bucharest – Athens and return flight: Ryanair 116 Euros
• Athens – Santorini and return flight: Ryanair 124 Euros
• Accommodation: Summer Time Villa 240 Euros
• Total: 480 Euros as a couple