Well it is time I start catching up on some of these blog posts now that we are back from vacation! I am currently in Beijing, my wife is asleep, she apparently adjusts to the time zone changes better than I do; it is 4:30 am.
In just a few days I will be flying back to the States, where hopefully (US immigration permitting) my wife will be joining me soon after (our lawyer says three to six months from now, hopefully closer to three then!).
Anyhow, let’s talk about Santorini!
Santorini is one of the more popular tourist destinations in Greece. It is also known as Thira. You can get there by flying or boat, but boat is by far the cheaper (and more awesome) option! We took the boat to get to Santorini, and we had an awesome hotel, and the whole experience on this island was great!
So let’s start at the beginning. We flew into Athens on September 1, getting in late and after riding the subway from the airport we wandered into our hotel some time after midnight. I will talk more about our time in Athens in a separate post though, so on September 3 we took the subway over to Piraeus Port where we caught our ferry, which was run by Blue Star Ferries. We took the slow ferry, which takes about eight hours to get to Santorini, you can pay a little more for the fast ferry that gets you there in half the time.
The ferry tickets were 40 EUR (about 50 USD as of this post) per person each way (there are cheaper seats available, and more expensive ones as well, we went for the middle option – what was called air seats). Our ferry left at about 7:20 am. Oh, so if you ever plan on taking this ferry, when you get to the station for the port you first need to go out of the train station and cross the road (you’ll see a pedestrian overpass, or there is also a crosswalk) heading towards the ocean. Once you cross the road turn left and walk until you see an opening into where all the ships are, if you don’t have your ticket yet (or you don’t know which ferry to get on) go to the Blue Star Ferry office that will be left of you if you are facing the ships.
Anyhow, we had to go to the office to pick up our tickets because we had purchased them online. After that we proceeded to board the ship. Once on the ship we found our seats which were quite comfortable! It is amazing how many people, and vehicles, fit on these ferries. There were semi-trucks, buses, and a multitude of personal vehicles in that ferry.
This was the “line” to get off the ferry
This is a picture of our ferry after we disembarked
The views were amazing as we departed and passed many islands, stopping at two before we made it to Santorini. The ferry is large enough that motion was minimal, and my wife who got very sick on the Star Ferry in Hong Kong had no problems on this one. Once we made it to the island and got off we had to figure out how to get to our hotel! If any of you book the hotel we stayed at (which we highly recommend) then you should know you can call them when you get there and they will take you to the hotel for free! Unfortunately when we viewed the hotel page it didn’t mention anything about that, and I didn’t think to ask, so we found a shuttle that charged 20 EUR per person and we took that to get to our hotel.
Our hotel was amazing. The service was amazing, the view was amazing, the balcony very comfortable, it had a swimming pool, they gave us free drinks (but charged us 1 EUR per 1.5 L bottle of drinking water, which still wasn’t a bad price) and we were right on the ocean and a five minute walk from a good restaurant and a great beach that had few people.
The hotel is family-run, and the father of the family was very nice and drove us back to the ferry after we checked out, and he also drove us into town on our second day on the island. They spoke English very well also, there was no communication barrier as we had in other places we stayed during out trip. The price at the hotel varies from season to season, during September it is the middle price, 70 EUR per night (about 88 USD as of this post), during the off season (November through February if I remember correctly) it is 60 EUR per night, and during the high season (March through July or August) it is 90 EUR per night. This is far cheaper than the very expensive hotels over in Fira (the main city) that don’t have an accessible beach but do have a nice view. Also, our hotel was fairly small, consisting of two buildings with a total of maybe 12 rooms, which added to the charm and comfort.
The island is small, so no matter where you stay you are close to everything, especially if you rent a vehicle of some sort. We rented an ATV for 24 hours, but we’ll get to that. Anyhow, I highly recommend Artemis Village, the hotel was excellent, our view was amazing, and the service was very personal and welcoming.
The first day we were there we walked down to the beach, it was quite rocky but all the beaches on the island are with the exception of one, but we’ll get to that. After walking along the beach we ate at a restaurant where the price was right (might have been a 20 EUR meal, my wife got some sort of fish and I got pasta), and the service was good, though it was not a fancy place. It was also family-run, our waitress appeared to be the daughter of the owner. I wish I remembered the name of this restaurant, but alas I don’t, it was the lower of the two restaurants that you pass on your way to the beach (Karterados beach is the one near the hotel) from Artemis Village (our hotel) though.
Our second day we got a ride into Fira from the father of the family who run the hotel. Once there we found somewhere to grab lunch, a nice little restaurant that was called Mama’s House I believe. The food was excellent, Greek salads in Greece are amazing by the way! The pasta and bread in Greece are also quite good, and my wife loved the seafood (I don’t really eat seafood myself). The price at this restaurant wasn’t too bad for a restaurant in Fira (it is the most crowded with tourists part of the island). After that we wandered around town a bit, bought some sunscreen for the very white me, ate some ice cream and started heading towards one of those blue-roofed churches to have a look around.
We had been planning to rent a scooter for the day, but when I had called they said I needed an international driver’s license (should have taken care of it while I was stateside, this would come back to haunt us later, and FYI you can go into any AAA office in the States and have your license converted to an international driver’s license for about $35) and I didn’t have one. So we figured we’d go on foot. When we were walking around though we noticed that there weren’t really cops around and we thought maybe we’d see if someplace would rent us a scooter anyway (technically illegal I think, so we can’t condone this), and we came across a place that said that licenses from any country would work, but for a scooter we needed a motorcycle endorsement.
However, they said we could rent an ATV with a regular driver’s license, so that is what we ended up doing! The ATV rental was 25 EUR for 24 hours, and it worked out better than a scooter anyway because it had a large box on the back we could lock our backpack in while we were driving, and the helmets in when we parked. It was also a ton of fun to cruise around this beautiful island on the ATV feeling the wind and sun and enjoying all the amazing views!
So we cruised on up and checked out that church, which was beautiful, and in the parking lot my wife found a fig tree she decided to sample the fruit of 
We then drove down into town and parked while we wandered around along the ocean side of the town where we got some of our best views of the classic white buildings cast against the deep blue ocean and light blue sky that you’ll see when you Google images of Santorini.
Next we decided to check out the southern part of the island, and we drove to Kamari beach where we had a light snack at a restaurant (mainly so they would let us change in their bathroom and use their private beach) and then headed down to the beach.
It was at this beach that we got a shock that we should have been aware of about European beaches: women can and often do go topless on any beach! Sure enough there were topless women at every beach we went to during our sojourn in Europe, a bit of a shock for my Chinese wife and American self. Anyhow, the water was quite calm as this isn’t the ocean but is the southern Aegean sea. The water was cool, but not cold like I am used to in northern California. It was quite enjoyable to swim in. Kamari beach was a bit crowded, but the water wasn’t. There were only a handful of people swimming in the area we were at at any one time, which was nice.
After we left the beach we headed to Oia on the northern end of the island to watch the sunset, the young lady at our hotel had highly recommended the experience. The view was quite spectacular, though it was also quite crowded (I guess our hotel wasn’t the only one to recommend the experience). Following this we headed back to Fira to check out the night life and find a restaurant for dinner, this was our one year anniversary after all.
We found Fira is quite lively at night, we had to go a bit far to find somewhere to park, after we had we walked back into town and found a good restaurant (again I don’t remember the name). We got some grilled meat combination to share, along with a couple salads, and then dessert which was some sort of chocolate cake with ice cream.
Dinner was excellent, though a bit pricey (it was our anniversary though). We used the wifi at the restaurant to try to figure out how to drive back to our hotel, the route looked quite confusing (lot’s of turns) and my cell phone died, so we couldn’t rely on GPS. We were a bit concerned it’d be hard to get back as we couldn’t recognize the signs very easily in the dark, but I knew we had to go to Karterados first, so we headed that direction and it turned out to be quite easy to find our hotel! I just stayed on the road towards Karterados (following signs towards Karterados at any intersection) and we drove right to the hotel just a few minutes after we passed Karterados itself. In total it was probably only a 15 or 20 minute drive back to the hotel.
Well that ended our second day at the hotel. We had filled up the gas (it was half full when we picked it up) and noticed we had a lot of gas left to use up before we turned it in (like a car you have to turn it in with the same amount as it had when you rented the vehicle), so we decided to do some more exploring of the island! We drove around and eventually saw signs for the Red Beach and decided to go check it out! It was definitely worth the drive, and the short hike down to the beach. We also bought some fruit from a vendor on the way down to the beach (produce prices were very nice in Greece, even in tourist areas like this) and ate it once we got down there.
After the beach we made our way back to Fira, stopping at a couple stores on the way to buy sandwiches, vegetables, and other food to eat for our next couple meals (a method I highly recommend, buying groceries or food from grocery stores that is, it makes long trips much more affordable). We turned in our ATV and walked down to the bus station where it would cost us about 5 EUR for the two of us to ride back to our hotel (actually a few hundred meters from the hotel). We were prepared to pay this, but they said we’d have to wait about 40 minutes for the next bus so we decided to see how much a taxi would be, it turned out it’d only be 8 EUR so that seemed like a reasonable price so we took it and it took us straight to our hotel.
We spent the afternoon down on Karterados Beach soaking in the sun and swimming. We’d sit on our butts and scoot into the water since it was so rocky it hurt to walk in! It was a fun, relaxing afternoon. We were sad we’d have to leave the next day, we definitely plan to go back someday, to either this island or one of the less-crowded ones.
Speaking of which, this was a rather crowded island, not in the area we stayed, but there were lots of tourists on the roads (not so much that there was what you’d call heavy traffic) and walking around Fira in particular.
The next morning came and we packed our stuff and were driven back to the ferry where we repeated the eight-hour journey we had a few days earlier but in reverse. This is not an experience we shall soon forget, and we will be going back some day. Do you have any questions about our time in Santorini? You can comment below or e-mail me at todd.nestor@gmail.com and I promise to respond!