When you picture Greece and the quintessential shot with white washed walls, steep cliff drop offs, crystal blue water, you end up in Santorini, specifically Oia, in the north of the island. We only had 2 days here since we struggled saying goodbye to Kalymnos and sightseeing turned into a whirlwind mission. We rented a scooter early in the morning, mapped out our plan of attack and took off. The lady who guided us through the map was a little slaphappy and 2 hours into it, we could no longer make sense of what was noted. We saw some beautiful beaches, some stunning views, but the quintessential shot, not yet. We made it to the middle of the island on the caldera side in Fira, where supposedly, according to our map is the site with ‘the shot’, but we squeezed through hundreds of tourists vying for an opening in the view and found ourselves pretty disappointed. This can’t be it we thought. Tired, hot and hungry we made our way to some large beers and silly, delicious food. Our plan had been to leave Oia for day 2, but the crowds had us screaming to get out, so we made a move for the north. A little sidetrack took us for a nice ocean swim followed by fruity cocktails and a nap. We hit Oia near sunset and ended up in this incredibly stunning bay, an old fishing village where we just had to stop for dinner. Santorini finally got exciting since this was way more along the lines of how we pictured it. Fresh fish, stunning sunset, wine, quaint and lovely and wonderful it was! It was a no- brainer, day 2 would definitely be spent back up here. Since we had covered the entire island in one day, our whirlwind mission took on a state of relaxation. We enjoyed some morning beach time in Perissa where we were staying and the water was so crystal clear it didn’t seem real. It made us question why we didn’t choose to scuba dive here, but we missed the morning boat and the afternoon one was full. Se la vie! We rode back to Oia and were pleasantly relieved when all of a sudden every corner we turned was the quintessential shot! There it was in all of its glory, Greece as we’ve known it through books and film and we strolled around for hours. Always making good use of our snorkeling gear, we got to pull it out one last time. There was a trail at the end of the village in the bay that led around to a giant rock situated about 50ft from the edge and snorkeling around it totally made up for not being able to dive! Mysterious rocks, beautiful formations and visibility for days! Satisfied with our sightseeing attempts, we rode home to our cute “Amelie” hotel and spent the evening along the water reminiscing about our ‘honeymoon-like’ adventure, stuffed our faces with more delicious food and had a waiter tell us we shouldn’t order more because we had ordered more than enough, tried new cocktails, went back to old cocktails, listened to live music, danced, and finished the night off at the bakery with gluttonous baklavas! It was a good time and it made for a slow morning crawl to beans and toast, double shots of coffee and packing for our final day in Greece and ferry to Athens…
Picture credits: Simon and Alice
