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Back for Part 2 of the 10 Things I Love about Santorini. Here we go with number 6.
6. In some of the doorways and all around the island you can find my favorite flower, the bougainvillea. The colors are so amazing and the crisp color of the flowers against the white of the buildings are like looking at a freshly painted white canvas with a bold color thrown on it. These flowers grow everywhere on the island. They are all over the place surrounding doorways on buildings and just growing like trees in the middle of no where. They come in many colors, white, pink and purple.
7. The water is amazingly clear. We went snorkeling by the beach and the water was as clear as can be. We didn’t go out far but being able to see the bottom of the ocean floor as clearly as if I were not in water but just standing on the shore. Also when we were at the pier you could see pretty far down. Oh and by the way we found boats together with my mom’s name and my name on two separate boats. Though my name was spelled differently.
8. Let’s talk wine. There are several wineries on this small island. We visited Santos wine which is one of the larger wineries. They have over 1,000 harvesters on the island that Santos uses for grapes. The tour was quite interesting. We had been wondering about the vineyards because they looked nothing like any we had seen before. The grapes grow really close to the ground and this was odd. On the tour, we found out that the farmers braided the vines after about two years this keeps them growing close to the ground. It can be very windy on Santorini and this protects the grapes. We did a wine tasting at Santos which was fun. For 35 euro you can taste 16 different wines. Make sure you don’t have anywhere else to go because even though they don’t give you a lot. I believe it was 50 or 60ml per glass and we split it between the two of us we were a little tipsy after the wine tasting.
9. Santorini is not cheap but it’s not as expensive. The hotel we stayed at was about $125 a night. We did find the food to be less expensive. When we went to St. Maarten earlier in the year, the cost of each meal (lunch or dinner) was at least 100 euro. In Santorini the cost was close to half of that. I was really expecting it to be more expensive to eat. We were there at the end of summer but according to Stanthis the tourist season lasts until December.
10. The beaches are beautiful in Santorini. Our favorite was Perissa beach. We went to 4 different beaches on the island. The first one was Caldera Beach it is right across the street and down the caldera from Kalimera Hotel. It is the only beach on the caldera side. While standing on the beach you can see the entire caldera. Being near the bottom makes you feel really small with the great cliffs above you across the sea. We had to cross some rocks to get to the sandy area and the sand was as black as coal. The second beach we went to was Perissa. The water was crystal clear and this is where we went snorkeling. We rented chairs at The Corner Bar, you could buy two first row chairs and an umbrella for 15 euro and the second row as 10 euro. The sand (pebbles) are back and hot but it is a very relaxing beach, it wasn’t overly crowded and the people were friendly. We then went to red beach, it was quite a hike over to the beach and the wind was whipping around and the sand was pelting us all over. The waters was beautiful but you had to put rocks on your towels to keep them from blowing away. We also went to black beach and it is pretty much out of the way and was a bit hard to find. The rocks on this beach are huge. Though as a bonus the restaurant here called Akro had some really great food (and no french fries were served). We then visited Kamara Beach. I don’t know why but neither of us liked this beach. I guess it just didn’t have the right vibe. Of all the beaches we loved Perissa the most, we went there three times and soaked up the rays. There are many more beaches on the island and you should definitely try and visit as many as you can. The one beach I wanted to see that we did not was white beach, I believe the only way to get there is by boat and we never had the opportunity to go. By the way many of the beaches have boats that come in and take you to the other beaches. At red beach you can catch a boat for I believe 10 euro per person to white beach and black beach.
