I found my hostel online at only 8 euro’s a night which is a fantastic price considering I was paying 20 to 25 euros a night at other places. It was a fantastic place to stay, a bit far from the two main cities of Oia and Fira but much closer to the beach than they were…only a 5 minute walk away. On my first night there I met 3 great people Rhys, Ashley and Steph. Over the next few days the four of us saw the entire island, even the surrounding islands!
The next day we went on a full day boat and bus tour of the islands around Santorini. There is a nearby island that was created 50 years ago by an active volcano that has been turned into a tourist attraction and many people come to visit it. We hiked all across the island for about an hour- and my 3 friends all wore flip flops. It was a difficult hike for them, while I (thankfully) wore shoes. There were many broken flop flop straps and probably a few very tired people after the hike. Once we got to the top of the island, there was a fantastic panoramic view of the area – we could see all the islands around, and most of santorini. We got back on the boat and went to another nearby island to swim in the hotsprings. I decided to stay on the boat, as it was a pretty far swim and I’m not that confident in my swimming abilities, but my partners in crime didn’t think it was that hot for a hotsprings. After a 20 minute swim, we went to Thirisa island which has a population of 250…but about 15 restaurants. You could tell once the tourist’s left at around 4 pm, the island gets very dead. On thirisa we had a fantastic meal at a seaside restaurant with a very hungry stray cat as our companion. After lunch, we jumped in the water for a quick swim and cool down before grabbing a coffee or ice cream and getting on another boat to Oia.
Now, to get from the port to the city of Oia you have 3 choices (we only had two). You could take a donkey up for 5 euros…or walk. I decided that donkey’s weren’t my cup of tea and walked up to the top. All 250 steps of it. It was a long and very, very sweaty walk up the side of the cliff. We got to the top and had a fantastic view of Oia, which is the city with all the white buildings in Santorini. The white paint industry must be supported in a large part by this city. It was beautiful to see all the buildings clean and white with the backdrop of the cliffs and ocean, and an occasional blue roof symbolizing a church.
Oia is where there is supposed to be a fantastic view of the sunset and you must get your spot early to get a good shot of the sunset…unfortunately for us, that day was a Santorini sunset FAIL. There had been threats of rain, so the clouds covered the sunset and we didn’t get to hear everyone applaud for the sunset.
The next day, we decided to do what most tourist’s do and rent ATV’s and go island hopping. We went to 5 or so beaches, saw Oia and Fira again and finished off the day with a very cold trip up the mountain to try and see the sunset again. Unfortunately there were still clouds and we didn’t get to see it properly, but I got some fantastic pictures of the sun setting in between the clouds. Since our ATV’s weren’t very powerful, it took us 45 minutes to drive up the mountain but less than half that to go down. That night we went out for dinner at the restaurant across the street – the owner of the restaurant we went to grew up at finch and the 401, which is very close to where I am from, small world! After dinner we went to the beach and sat around drinking for a bit, before a torrential rain pour killed the party and we went back to the hostel.
We all agreed that we would take it easy the next day and just chilled out at the beach and relaxed. It was nice to be sitting on the beach reading and doing nothing after a few days of running around. We spent the night doing what almost all hostel people do, which is sit around and talk about where we are from and meeting new people. It was fun hearing about people’s lives back home and their experiences while on vacation.
On the final day in Santorini, it was spent packing in the morning and sitting around the hostel chilling out waiting for our respective boats/flights off the island. I was flying out at 740 that night…but didn’t end up leaving until 11:00 because of an Air Traffic Controllers strike. They decided to control and delay flights within Greece for 6 hours that day, and delayed many of them. It was very frustrating sitting in the airport doing nothing for 3 hours, but that happens often in Greece and I had TV shows loaded up on my laptop and books on my kindle so the time went pretty fast.
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