Advertisement
Published: June 27th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Please insert donkey here
Here is one such steep path that should have a donkey on it. Santorini is one of those quintessential Greek Experiences. White-washed houses, donkeys pottering up steep paths, grey-whiskered old greek men basking in the peaceful lull of the waves. And of course, that welcoming fat greek village lady, ushering you into her house to prepare you a home-cooked meal. All that and more awaits you at Santorini.
What lies! Lies lies lies! White-washed houses yes. And yes, there are donkeys ... for rent ... for the right price. But grey-whiskered old men - they are much too busy trying to get you to rent a quad-bike to have time to enjoy the calming sea. And those fat greek village women are busy hawking their selections of olive soap, olive handwash, olive ointment, and if they could, probably even olive-scented aftershave.
Santorini is a well-oiled tourist haven. Tour buses run every hour, cars and bikes for rent on every corner, and a travel agent on every street. Still - its a definitely a very pretty tourist haven, and with a bit of luck, you just may be able to enjoy all that beauty with 1 minute of silence before a quad-bike zooms past. A definite must-see for Greece, but just don't go
White houses
White houses of all shapes and sizes. Totally redecorated to meet the Hollywood-inspired expectations of greek housing that all tourists expect to see on the island. expecting that village-like experience that was so carefully conjured up "Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants"
We arrived late afternoon from Athens and went straight to our B&B. Our accommodation was in one of those typical greek white-washed houses, complete with the seemingly mandatory bougainvillea that appears outside every such accommodation in Santorini. Dumping our bags, we headed into Fira - the village capital of Santorini.
Fira is very pretty. Its a village of white-washed houses built on the side of a very steep slope. The majority of those houses are today either restaurants or hotels, but thankfully, they have been tastefully decorated to maintain a very pretty panaroma. My patient wife had to endure a rather pronlonged session of photo snapping during which I photographed the exact same scene at least 100 times.
We then headed into the main square of the village. This is where you suddenly realize that Santorini really is for the tourists. Village main squares are meant to have old women sitting on benches and old men standing around. And when a foreigner walks in, said old people are meant to stare curiously - possibly event point and mutter.
This village square
Fira by night
It truly is a pretty little place had a book shop. And a quad bike shop. And a kodak express. But all that tourist-pandering, village-experience-destroying evilness was quickly forgotten as soon as we spied heaven. Obelix was its name.
Obelix - advertised as having the best souvalakis on Santorini - had the best darn gyros we had ever tasted (we should confess though that at the time, they were the only gyros we had ever tasted - but now, with the benefit of hindsight and copious amounts of subsequent gyros, we can truthfully claim them as the best). Sadly, the souvalakis were rather passe. A gyros is the greek version of a doner kebab - but with the added goodness of chips. I'm convinced gyros is in fact a derivative of ambrosia (mythical food of the greek gods).
After embarrassingly devouring a gyros amidst unnecessarily loud exclamations of delight, we proceeded to explore the rest of Fira. If you've been to Venice, then you pretty much know what the rest of Fira looked like - subtract the canals, paint the walls white, and you're left with lots and lots of tourist shops selling everything from glass trinkets to greek dresses to olive-endowed cosmetics. Its a
pity how touristy Fira is, because those white-washed houses really are very very pretty, and would just look so good if they had a donkey out front with some head-scarf-wearing old women.
We decided to drown our disappointment in a meal of Greek seafood. Seafood is popular on the island, I guess, because of the proximity to the water. Interestingly, the menus mark their seafood as either fresh or from the freezer. "From the freezer" - surely they could come up with a more appetizing moniker, such as "seafood on ice", or "seafood lightly chilled". We had a huge plate of squid together with a appetizer of fried cheese. If you've never had fried cheese, then you need to go to your local greek restaurant and eat some now. That stuff will kill your arteries - but what a way to die. Our restaurant was on the roof of one of the buildings, so we got to watch the sunset while eating. The sunset on Santorini is meant to be one of those life-changing events. Unfortunately, we were too busy savouring the fried cheese to fully enjoy its life-changingness - but it definitely was one of the prettier sunset
Path beside the caldera
This is the main strip that runs along the cliff-face looking onto the famed Santorini caldera we've seen.
We then spent the rest of the night walking around the streets taking in the views and remarking at how the fat the average package tourist member is. Day 1 in Santorini had been short but rather pretty. Tomorrow though was to be a day of adventure - we would join the ranks of the quad-biking hooligans and explore the rest of the island.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.434s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 20; qc: 93; dbt: 0.1966s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb