August 4 SANTORINI

Our second day in Santorini was wonderful. We caught the local bus to Oia (ee-ah), on the tip of Santorini. We arrived early and there were no crowds, which was lovely.

Oia, another town on a cliff:

We walked down approximately 400 steps to the village of Amoudi, which was as pretty as a postcard. I took waaaaay too many pictures! We were hot and it was close to lunch by that point so we stopped a local restaurant, Dimitris Taverna.

It's a long, long way down to Amoudi:

Amoudi, the picture postcard port:

Interestingly, Dimitris’ wife grew up in Vancouver. We had a long conversation with her about what it’s like living in Greece and what she misses about Vancouver and Canada. She and her husband open and run the restaurant during the summer and close it during the winter. She said that she really hadn’t traveled to many places in Greece because everything closes up in the winter.

Lunch was dolmades (rice and pine nuts wrapped in vine leaves and served chilled) as well as fava (mushed yellow lentils served with lemon). The local bread was fantastic, too.

The view from Dimitris' taverna:

The walk up the 400 steps back to Oia wasn’t nearly as hard as we expected. Simone ran up the steps, walked down, then ran up again for a bit of impromptu exercise. Mom and I took our time and enjoyed the view.

In Oia we did some shopping. Well, Simone did some shopping. I tried to shop but couldn’t get past the sticker shock. Everything in Santorini is marked up two or three times higher than other places, it seems.

We caught the bus back to Fira and had a wash and rest. No one was really hungry at dinner time. Mom and Simone shared some fruit. I enjoyed some more of the vino-in-a-plastic-bottle. Actually, I enjoyed a little too much vine-in-a-plastic-bottle. At 7pm I was very happy and also very hungry. Mom helped me walk up the caldera and down to the main street where I bought the most fantastically delicious gyro for EUR$2. Yum.