Santorini

We didn’t see many of these iconic blue-roofed churches – apparently they’re mostly in Oia, on the other side of the island.

After waving goodbye to J at Istanbul airport, the final four of us flew out to Santorini, via Athens. The trip was uneventful apart from a pretty heavy landing in Santorini – so much so that a few of us were checking the back of the plane as we disembarked to see if we’d had tail strike, but it appeared not.

Looking out of the blue-painted shutters to the terrace…

Our hotel had sent a van to come and pick us up, and we had a great introduction to the island by zooming up the hills and around the steep corners until we finally reached our hotel, the Hotel Leta. It’s a cute little place with whitewashed walls, blue-painted pool and a terrace overlooking the island. The rooms were pretty basic, but they had ensuite bathrooms and fridges in the room, so we were happy!

The view from the terrace

Across the road from the hotel was a very handy laundromat, which had a resident bunny, which was very cute and let us cuddle it. There were also lots of cats around, especially at night, when they would beg for food and cuddles!

Laundromat bunny

One of the resident kitties at the hotel

Santorini has a lovely relaxed vibe to it. It’s incredibly full of cruise-ship passengers on the days they were in port, but quiet and relaxed otherwise. The shopkeepers told us that it was the last couple of weeks of the season, before everything closes up, and we did experience that, for example the one restaurant I found that offered GF pasta on the menu (omg was I craving it!!) had gone to a reduced menu just this week, which of course meant that the GF stuff wasn’t available. I almost cried, but managed to satisfy my craving by filling up on delicious fried saganaki cheese and risotto.

Seafood risotto, with the world’s biggest prawn on top!

The Fab Four out to dinner

I also had the best massage of my entire life on Santorini, and of course since it’s taken me a while to write this blog post, I’ve forgotten the name of the place I went to! It was one of the fish spa places though, next to a shop with fabulous Greek Mythology chess sets. Seriously, I was in heaven. Wish I’d gone back for more while I was there!

The results of a pedicure on my sandal-tanned feet – nails in “Amazon-Amazoff” 🙂

Cable car – don’t look down!

Another fabulous excursion was the cruise the four of us went on. We took the cable car down to the Old Port (and I even looked at the view briefly as we careened down the cliff face!) and met the boat, which took us out to the volcano island for a couple of hours. We were all a bit shocked that we were standing on an actual volcano, as the islet was entirely volcanic rock. We were also a bit annoyed that when we booked the cruise they didn’t tell us we’d be crawling all over the island for hours, and to bring solid walking shoes and extra water, but most of us did manage to get around part of the volcano before admitting defeat.

Volcano island

We also swam in the hot springs created by said volcano, which was great. It wasn’t terribly hot, as it’s just a part of the bay where the hot spring comes out and mixes with the seawater. Nice to have a bit of a dip.

Sunset

The best part was watching the sunset from the Oia end of the island, with a plastic cup of mediocre vino in hand (the cruise brochure proclaimed “tasting of local wines and hors d’oeuvres“) before returning to the port and zooming back up the cable car to the top of the cliff.

View from the cliff

On my last day, once the others had gone to catch their ferry, I explored a little more of the top of the cliff overlooking the caldera, which is mainly tourist shops and cafes clinging to the cliff. Unfortunately there were five or six cruise ships in for the day, so there were thousands and thousands of day-trippers wandering around. Luckily there were still a few quiet nooks to sit and watch the ocean, before it was time for me to go and catch my ferry to the next stop, Crete.

Boarding the ferry – a bit of a scrum!