Santorini... the beauty continues

Today was my third day in Santorini and it was every bit as spectacular as yesterday, and then some.

It started with breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. I love how Greece’s idea of breakfast coincides with my own. After breakfast, I walked down to the rental car place and renewed the car for one more day.

Soon after, the five of us girls piled into the itsy bitsy Nissan Micra (aptly named, although roomy inside!) and set off to find Red Beach, our first stop of the day. It proved to be fairly easy, just follow the posted signs. Although they were few and far between, the signs were very helpful as they were posted in both Greek and English.

The drive to Red Beach was beautiful and took us down another windy, island-mountain road. I was a little scared when I started driving yesterday, but by now I was a pro – confident and beeping my horn at all the appropriate times, winding up and down the mountain roads as though I’ve been doing it my whole life, and careful to stop and let others by in the narrow sections that were also used as parking.

When we arrived at Red Beach, we got out but were a little disappointed in what we saw. It was just a lookout over some huge red rocks and a little hiking path to the side. We took some pictures and decided to see what the hiking path was before heading back to the car. Good thing we did, too, because the best was hidden from view. We hiked up about 50 feet through some easy-to-hike terrain and then the path leveled out. To our left and straight in front of us was a cliff, behind us was the path we’d just climbed, and to our right was more hiking up the hill. We walked a little further over to the cliff edge and then we saw it: the most beautiful view in the entire world, Red Beach on Santorini, from the elevated position of the cliff we were standing on.

But there were people on the beach, and more than would fit in the three kayaks we saw down there. How did they get there? Oh, they just meandered on down the side of the cliff. Easy-peasy. HA. It was about as easy as me crossing that raging river last May after the Barefoot Masai Marathon in Daejeon. We just clambered over the rocks about five feet from the edge of the cliff and then half-walked, half-slid down the small, lose rocks in a mini-ravine before climbing up some rocky stairs with a wooden railing tied to the larger rocks by some old rope, and then down the other side of the stairs, before almost-all-the-way sliding down the remaining part of the mini-ravine on the lose rocks and big rocks that crumbled at our fingertips and then finally, we were on the beach. The spectacular view that we saw from the top was even more magnificent when viewed from the beach itself.

Once down at sea level, I walked most of the beach with Ebony before heading back to sunbathe with rest of the girls on the red sand overlooking the turquoise Agean Sea. The beach was lovely, but we noticed something quite strange: a series of for doors set into the side of the cliff, each with a spot for a window and each a different color. I’m still not sure what the doors were for or why they were there, but they were rather interesting to look at. We sunbathed on the Red Beach for about an hour or so, during which time we saw a bunch of other tourists at the top of the cliff before deciding to head down to see the view themselves.

We eventually headed back up the side of the cliff and back to the car, and then went in search of the elusive White Beach. White Beach was on the map, but it wasn’t until we drove around for probably over an hour and then stopped at probably the most quaint looking Best Western in the world that we found out it was only accessible by boat. Not wanting to spend the money to take a boat to White Beach, we decided to search for another beach. We had seen another sign for a beach earlier in our travels, a beach closer to Perissa, so we backtracked to the hotel and eventually found the sign, took the road, and wound our way down to another beach on the island of Santorini, Vlychada Beach.

When we arrived at Vlychada Beach, we found that it was a beach as well as a marina/dry dock/filling station for boats. We came to the conclusion that it was a part of Santorini not meant to be seen by tourists. The beach was empty, and there were a few people we saw around the marina doing marina-things. It was nearing five in the evening and we still wanted to try and check out tonight’s sunset, and we had to run back to the hotel and drop off Jen so she could sign up for her upcoming classes, so we only stayed about fifteen minutes before heading back.

We headed back into Perissa to the hotel to drop Jen off, and then decided to drive back up to Oia to see if tonight’s sunset would be better than last night’s. We got a bit of a late start, leaving the hotel around 7pm, and the drive from Perissa to Oia was about 28km, so we decided to stop at a look-out point just before we got into Oia to watch the sun set from there. Going into Oia, finding a proper place to park, and making our way down the cobblestone streets, up and down the stairs, and out to the tip of the island would have taken far longer and we didn’t want to risk missing what could be a beautiful sunset.

From our vantage point high on the mountain cliff, we watched the sun as it set behind a thick span of clouds over the farmland of Santorini, complete with Oia in the background and horses roaming on the farms below. It wasn’t a postcard sunset, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

After the sun dipped behind the clouds, we continued our drive into Oia and walked the cobblestone streets once more, through the white stucco homes and businesses and the churches with the blue domed rooftops. We went into jewelry store after jewelry store, some with natural stone beads on leather cords and others with exquisite precious metals handcrafted by expert goldsmiths. I found a store that had Australian opals set in a wide range of jewelry, and bought myself an Australian opal ring the color of the sea, set in .925 sterling silver.

After perusing the shops and walking the lazy yet stunning streets of Oia for probably the last time, we headed back to Perissa to meet up with Jen and get some dinner.

We ended up eating at a restaurant on the beach near our hotel, suitably named Waves ~ Chill Out Bar. We were greeted by Larry, the dog, and the owner, whose name I unfortunately did not catch. We sat in a very comfortable u-shaped booth, guarded by Larry, and ordered our food. I had the Traditional Greek Sandwich, which was basically a Greek salad between bread. Imagine a hoagie roll stuffed with tomatoes, sliced olives and feta cheese, served with fries. I also had two Disaronno on the rocks, which were divine after being Disaronno-deprived for the past year-plus. The owner was watching the Madrid football game on TV and cheered really loudly at one point, and then got up and told us that he was so happy his team just scored, and his new friends (us) were going to benefit by receiving a free drink. Wow! He made us all mao-tai’s and they were extremely delicious. I think it is my new tropical drink.

We asked the owner if he could take a picture of us, and he did! With my camera! He also used his camera to capture the same scene, and we will now forever be in Santorini.

Sent off by the owner and Larry, the dog, we headed back to the hotel.

Another exquisite day on Santorini.