Greek Island Hopping – Santorini

Days 46 & 47

23rd and 24th of August

Island Three Santorini

My first words were definitely expletives when we pulled around the hill and walked towards our hotel, non-repeateable but definitely necessary. This place is INCREDIBLE! I was very excited about coming here and on the transfer ride up to our hotel I was almost jumping out of my skin with excitement, but I really had no idea it would be this beautiful!

Unfortunately for my viewers at home I don’t think there is anyway I could capture the true beauty of this place in photos, because looking at this in person fills you with so much happiness. This place has also made me miss my important people a lot because I want them to see this and feel the same happiness I feel when I look at the view. I promise if I win lotto I will bring you all here with me!

On the way to our hotel though I did see something a bit sad. I saw a man walking his donkey up the hill and whipping him in the face to get it to move quicker. I wanted to push him off his donkey and whip him in the face! I hate animal cruelty! Thats why if you are in Santorini, you shouldn’t take the donkey rides, they treat them terribly here!

We arrived at our hotel at about 4 in the afternoon. The original plan was to meet our tour group at their hostel in the city and go for dinner at a nice restaurant but Rhys and I really wanted to have a romantic afternoon just the two of us, some wine, our infinity pool and the amazing view over the Aegean sea at sunset. We swam for a while, took a few photos because we are posers, and as a waiter once said to me “you are on vacation, you can do whatever you want!” so we took more photos than was really necessary haha and we relaxed all afternoon.

Before we went swimming we had ordered room service, Souvlaki fresh orange juice and a frappe for Rhys. Delicious!! We cracked our bottle of wine as the sunset and had a glass each. It was beautiful seeing the full panoramic with these vivid colours changing every minute in front of your eyes. Nature certainly does put on a pretty impressive show!

After such a relaxing afternoon we figured the hotel restaurant would be a good place to eat. We ordered the Octopus, since it was so great on the boat tour, and it didn’t disappoint and then we got a salad and Rhys ordered the Sea Bass.

The service was fantastic, the guy seemed to have a lot of pride in what they were selling. The mains were pretty average, but the service made up for it. After a bottle of wine and so much sun from sitting by the pool all afternoon we thought we would chill in our amazing room, catch up on my blog 🙂 and rest for seeing the more of Santorini not that we want to leave the hotel at all!! It’s too relaxing here!

Summary of my thoughts on Santorini after today?

The next day we woke up to that amazing view and had breakfast brought to our room. We ate on our table setting out the front and watched the boats cruising toward the island. Very relaxing!

Today we decided we wouldn’t do too much,  just check out the main bit of town, but spend most of our day by the pool. In town we found a few nice little gifts for some of you lovely people at home and walked the strips for a while looking at all the cool shops and restaurants.

We went to a restaurant with a beautiful view for some greek salad and kebab with tzatziki 🙂 yummy! I could never get sick of this place!!

The views everywhere you look are beautiful! Although we saw the donkey trails on our travels, there are 588 stairs for them to climb up in the heat with their passenger. So cruel!

After checking out everything Santorini had on offer, we headed to our hotel for more swimming and sun baking which was fantastic, got a few more photos of our beautiful infinity pool and Rhys got a few shots of me chilling by the pool sneaky! haha and then we got ready to meet the crew for a picnic in Oia.

We were running a bit late, but we thought it would be pretty easy to find them since it was in the main tourist spot and there are a lot of them so they couldn’t be hard to spot. When we got up to Oia, and headed toward the main tourist area, you could barely move it was that busy. There were people in every spot, sitting on every flat surface. We walked for a good 15 minutes and decided to call our guide.

With a bit of direction we found them and were able to tuck into the picnic that Amelia our guide had organised for us. Shared and finished a bottle of wine between the two of us, got some photos and then got on the bus with the rest of the group and we headed to their hostel for them to freshen up for hitting the town.

The first bar we headed to was called the highland bar I think, you could get two cocktails for 8 euro there and there were free shots coming around. This is a dangerous start. We all danced for hours until it was time to head to the next bar, by now I am pretty sure we had 6 cocktails each and shots, although toward the end it got a little hazy! At the next bar I refused to drink anything but water because I knew I had already drank too much! We danced for another hour or so and then Rhys and I went to go find a cab. On the way I made friends with a stray puppy dog that followed me to the cab haha, fun times!

A 5 euro cab ride later and we were in our hotel, plenty of water consumed we went to sleep, knowing we had a ferry to catch the next day. The next day was awful! I was more hung over than I had ever been! and we had to wait in the sun for the ferry. I thought I would die in that sun! haha so thats the end of the drinking for me I think! Not sure how people do this haha!

Even after a major hangover my thoughts on Santorini are still full of love! and I have promised myself I will go back there one day!

E