Heaven on Earth.....Santorini

Our next stop on our trip was to Santorini, Greece. You know, that picture you always see of the white caves and blue domes? Yup. That was next. I've always wanted to go to this island and made sure it was a stop on this trip. It took us an entire day to travel from Florence to Santorini, but by the time we arrived, we could get a good night's sleep and start the day early!

Our bungalow

I know I said I was going to do a whole blog post on lodging, and I will, but this hotel, the Residence Suites, deserves an extra shout out. We had our own private patio with stunning views of the caldera (volcano), and we were told that everyone loves our room so much, even folks in the honeymoon suite ask to switch to it! We called it our little bungalow. I'm not sure how we got so lucky, but we'll take it!

The view from our hotel room

We were staying directly in the neighborhood with the blue domes, Oia (pronounced Eee-uh). While there are streets you can drive on here, most of the village is pedestrian streets only, as is a lot of Santorini in general with their small walkways. You see a lot of hotel staff carrying bags for their guests, which is what ours did to show us how to find it. Along the walk he gave us a bit more history about the island. Santorini is the southernmost island of the Cyclades islands, and is the remnant of a volcanic caldera.....the entire area we were in used to be one large island, but when a volcano erupted, 60% of it was destroyed, leaving what you see today. As I mentioned above, our hotel room had a stunning view of it. The hotel staff reminded us that the volcano is still active, so if we happened to see smoke coming from it, just get drunk because we weren't getting off the island alive. Ha! 

Byzantine Castle

This village gets really busy at the end of the day because of the famed sunsets in Santorini. So what worked to our favor was to explore in the morning when the crowds were light, and then leave in the afternoon. After having breakfast, we made our way to the furthest edge of the village near the Byzantine Castle. It's a beautiful lookout post that is now mostly ruins, and apparently is THE place to be for the sunset. But truthfully, any view is a good one. The other interesting thing about this stop is it apparently makes everyone an Instagram model. Yup, every person we ran into was posing. Did we get pictures? Of course, but we weren't posing trying to make it perfect. This windy-haired picture is the proof. :)

Just after 1pm, we were due to meet at the post office for our tour pickup. Our friends had told us about a sunset cruise being the favorite thing they did in Greece, so naturally, we had to book it also. The tour came with a pickup and dropoff (thank goodness, because it was on the complete opposite end of the island), and an afternoon and evening of Santorini white wine and freshly made Greek food.

Since we did have a pickup, and we were on the opposite end of the island, that meant we had about 45 minutes in the car with our driver, named George. We took this time to ask him for some Greek language tips. We wanted to be able to properly thank people for their assistance so asked how to say thank you.

Thank you = efcharisto (pronounced eff-har-ees-tow) add po-li for 'very much'

You're welcome = Parakalo (pronounced para-cuh-low)

We were pretty proud of ourselves to walk onto the boat and immediately thank the staff. They were also shocked that we were attempting their language. :)

We boarded the catamaran sailboat with about 16 other people in total, not counting the crew. Our lead guide, Nicolas, gave us a few safety instructions and we were off, immediately with some delicious wine in hand. There are three famous beaches on the island of Santorini - Red, White and Black beach - all named for the color of their sand or rock formations. The first site we went past was the Red Beach - made famous because of the volcanic rock from the caldera. Next up was the White Beach.....named for the beautiful limestone rock surrounding the sand. You can see specks on green throughout the limestone, which is oxidated copper. This beach is recommended as a great place to hang during the day because it was one of the more private beaches on the island.

Following the beaches, we had some time to move along the island and as we did, Nicolas gave us some more history about Santorini. We weren't expecting this as part of the tour, but it was such a great addition to learn more about where we were staying. As I mentioned earlier, the Santorini volcano is still active and the name of it is called Nea Kameni, which is where many tourists boat out to. Nea Kameni and Mount Vesuvius are connected underwater. Nicolas told us that when Vesuvius erupts, Santorini residents can have a sigh of relief because they are in the clear for some time.

Following our lesson on the volcano, we were able to take the boat right up to it and swim in the water if we wanted. It was a little cold for me, so I stayed on the boat, but Bryan jumped in and swam to the hot springs - formed by the volcanic water. He joked that it was more of a warm spring, because the temperature didn't change much, but it was more about the experience than anything. It was also a bit difficult to swim back.....with the heavy salt in the water, the return swim was a bit more difficult for everyone on board.

After the hot springs, we all got to enjoy a delicious meal, made on the spot by our crew. Grilled chicken, pasta, greek salad and tzatziki sauce.......so yummy! And there was so much to go around - we loved it! Following dinner, the crew moved our boat to the final stop, where we would watch the sunset. If you think this couldn't get any better, we were in for a treat. While motoring to our spot - we saw three dolphins swimming next to our boat. It was incredible. We didn't have our camera near us to get a picture, but what a sight to see.

Finally we were ready for the main event, the beautiful sunset. It was fairly cloudy that day, but being from Colorado, we knew that could result in an even more beautiful sunset. We sat on the back of the boat, watched the sun dip behind the clouds, and then peek back at before going down completely. It was simply breathtaking. This was definitely a tour we had been looking forward to for some time, and it did not disappoint. If you ever make the trip to Santorini, this cruise needs to be on your list. You won't regret it.