We flew to Santorini today and were met at the airport upon our arrival by the hotel we were staying at. We are staying at the Villa Rose, a great small hotel, we will cover them in a review separately. But we can tell you here that it is a great place, great owners, and just a nice place.
After we unpacked in our room we took the recommendation of the Hotel for a traditional Greek dinner. We went to Café Nikki, it was only a couple blocks walk. What a great place and great food too. Look up the review on Café Nikki to see more details about the place. The Villa Rose has a review too so check that out too. I can tell you this much right now, we like both places.
The day after we arrived we went on a tour by boat. We went to several islands just off the coast that used to be part of Santorini before the volcano erupted. It was a great day, lots of sunshine and we even hiked up to the crater of the volcano too. It made for an interesting view of Santorini, one that we had not seen before even after as many times as we have been here. We will get the pictures up fairly soon.
We made a stop at the hot springs on our tour and many of the people on our boat jumped off and swam over to the springs. What a sight that was. Some were good at it and some…well lets just say they all made it. There was only one that they had to bring him a life preserver to use to finish swimming back to the boat.
All in all a great start to our visit to Santorini.
The second day, we will just kicked back a little and explored the town. Read that bead shop and the many stores by the cliffs.
There was a protest going on too. The police were out making sure things remained safe and calm. There was a sign across part of a road in town that said they were part of the Wall Street protests. We saw it about 10:30am when we walked by it. About 11:30am I thought I should walk back and take a picture of it to show you what the protest was like but alas, it was over and the sign was gone. Business went on as usual, except right in the immediate area of protest. No one said anything about it or seemed to be bothered about it either.
We ended our day in town by stopping at a bar / restaurant and having a drink before walking back to the hotel. Ok, we had two drinks, the view was just captivating looking out and down over the caldera. We could see the cruise ships that were in port, all tendered to shore. By the time we had are second drink or so all of the boat people were heading back to their ship. Amazing how much that cleared up the streets of people.