Ledi had a week off work (yes, some people have to work) so we had decided to meet in Greece and visit the island of Santorini. It is considered a wonder by itself to the point that it has come to symbolize Greece, or at least the Greek Islands. We actually met in Athens on Friday evening and flew to Santorini early on Saturday morning to stay 5 days there.

Volcano’s Villa, our hotel, was just great with very discreet staff and an awesome view. The hotel is located a bit out of Oia (second largest city of the island) making it looking secluded at first but it actually is great to not be cramped in the city like the other nice hotels of Oia.

Anyway, that is it with the rambling :).

Our room was one of this nice cave house with all amenities and a gorgeous view of the Caldera and the Volcano. The pool was very nice too with a view as magnificent as the one from the room. But sadly, we did not get to enjoy it as much as we should have since we were most of the time gone to explore the island and its great beaches.

For that purpose, I had the fancy of renting a scooter and ride along the winding roads, shirtless, and the wind blowing through our hair 8-). OK, I don’t know about that last part because first I don’t have much hair to blow and second, it would have been really reckless. Anyway once on the island, we realized how dangerous it was at night with the locals driving like crazy and how strong the sun was during the day and Ledi wisely and easily persuaded me to rent a car in place.

But I did not fancy a dull Hyundai so we looked for something a bit different. We ended up renting a Smart cabrio and it was definitely a smart choice :-p. First, I always had wanted to try one of those and second that little car was the perfect size to go around and park anywhere in usually full parking lots. It had a very cool blue color with numbers as you can see on the picture and we fell in love for it as soon as we got it. We took that little beater all around the island covering almost all its roads. Even if its little engine had some trouble sometimes getting through steep slopes, it never let us down and gave everything it had and more to get us where we needed to go. A real little warrior! Yeah, I know, I got gaga for that car. Ledi was too and we ended up haggling to know who would be driving :).

While there, we mostly drove around checking out the landscape and stopping to nice spots to take pictures, to supermarkets to stock up on goodies, to small sandwich places to get the best panino ever or to major beaches to lay back and enjoy watching the time pass doing nothing. Exactly the kind of activities we needed.

Our favorite beach was the Red beach where we went the first day. It owes its name to the red cliff at the foot of which it is located. It is small and secluded, well protected from the wind and has some great spots to dive from. There we met a group of six cool Greeks that invited us to join them as they were diving from rocks and taught us some words in their language including some bad words.

We also visited quite extensively the city of Oia and Fira (the main city) jam packed with shops, restaurants and tourists. As it is the case on the rest of the island, the new view you get at every street corner calls for a photo and one has to control oneself to not take pictures all the time. Not to be missed, the port of Ammoudi at the bottom of the cliff in Oia is very nice and triggered our picture frenzy one more time.

Of course, we had to at least look at the sunset once but since the sun was not decided to go down and it was well over 8PM, we turned that time in a silly photo session, once more.

We sure had a great time in Santorini where everything was just perfect. I already miss that little island! We loved it, I am sure you would too 8-).