After making it to Santorini after our weather-based flight delays from the night before, we landed at the Santorini Airport at 6:40AM. Angelo (our point of contact for the hotel we were staying at, who had been talking to us the night prior as we updated him on our flights), had arranged for a driver to pick us up from the airport. We were more than happy for that arrangement and it meant we wouldn’t have to fight the other folks getting off the plane for a taxi. It also felt fancy to walk out and see someone holding a sign with your name on it 😝

Our driver drove us to our hotel in Fira and we got there at 7AM. Angelo had left our keys with our driver so we got to go into our room right away. S and I unpacked quickly and immediately took a 1.5 hour ish nap since places wouldn’t be opened till closer to 10AM and we had about 3.5-4 hours of sleep the night before. 

After our nap, we talked to Angelo who had started work by now and he gave us some great recommendations, knowing our trip was cut shorter. The rest of our day’s itinerary was then based loosely off the tips he gave us! Including a great dinner spot he recommended that he recently went with his wife. 

We then headed out for breakfast. I used to love this chain in Montreal called Mr. Puffs that sold loukoumades, which are fluffy, bite-sized Greek donuts. So for breakfast I wanted that ASAP. We went to LukuMum, a breakfast place that also served these little donuts. We each got a plate. One of them was served with Greek yogurt ice cream. And after 1 bite of that, I knew I needed more Greek froyo in my life. The loukoumades were wonderful and scratched my Mr. Puffs itch perfectly. 

After breakfast, we grabbed our stuff and took the local bus to the Red Beach. The public bus system is relatively simple: you board a tour-bus like vehicle and then you pay €2 per person. The fronts of the busses usually mention the last stop they’re going to, so you can work out which one you should get on. The only gripe I have is that the bus schedules are quite infrequent. 

Getting to Akrotiri, we then had to walk from the archeological site toward the beach. It wasn’t a hard hike, but it was getting quite hot. Very neat to see the beach though, encircled by volcanic rocks. The sand itself is red-hued due to that too! 

Something we loved about Greece is all the stray animals wandering around! The cats and dogs that lounged around, waiting for someone to scratch them or just taking a chill nap on the sidewalk. They’re so cute and I feel if any of them showed me an ounce of affection, I’d be trying to find ways to take them back to Vancouver with me, 

Afterward we had to take the public bus back to Fira. We had initially wanted to do the Fira to Oia hike when we had 2 days in Santorini. But since our trip was cut short by flight delays, we decided we’d do a strip of the hike only. So we hiked from Fira to Imerovigli, which was about a 45 minutes hike. 

I loved the views and things along this hike! There were many shops and restaurants. And or course, the amazing views of the Aegean Sea to our left. 

We stopped for gyros and souvlaki along the way and it was delicious. 

I was dying at the end of this hike though from the heat, and the lack of sleep. Seeing that the next public bus to take us from Imerovigli to Oia would be an hour, we ended up calling a taxi. Which costed us a pretty penny (€36. We later learned this was the standard rate for any minivan operating in Greece. Even if you wanted to get driven 1 minute away, they have to charge €36. Which is silly because they’re doing it to protect the taxis but the whole of Santorini has like 20 taxis) for the 15 minutes drive out to Oia. But in a way, that ride helped save us some time and effort. 

When we arrived at Oia, we walked around the streets a little bit. There were loads of souvenir and tourist shops, as well as restaurants. I wanted to take a quick nap on S, but it was impossible to find a spot to even sit. So I ended up going to get a massage at Oasis Massage Center. Which allowed me to sleep for an hour, and get a pretty wicked massage. That helped to charge me back up! They were also very nice and gave S tea and drinks in a lounge as I was getting my massage. 

After this, we went to go take some touristy photos. Santorini has always looked so dreamy in photos and I was excited to properly see the views myself and also snap some shots for memories. It’s wild because there are areas where you need to line up to get a shot. It’s all self ran by the tourists and everyone’s pretty respectful of the system. Everyone also gets that if you’re next in line, you’re probably responsible for taking the group photo for the people in front of you. 

We had wanted to eat at Ammoudi Fish Tavern but they were undergoing some construction work via the city and had to refund our reservation (they’re so popular they charge you to make a reservation, which later gets credited to your bill). However, Angelo said he and his wife recently went to a restaurant called Emfasis that had nice views and good food. So we took his suggestion and booked a 7:30PM reservation so we could watch the sun set over Oia. Sunset was 8:10PM the day we were there. Emfasis indeed provided a beautiful view of the city and we’re glad we ate here (but it wasn’t cheap)! 

We walked around Oia a little bit more after dinner, but found all the souvenirs and shops to be more expensive than at Fira so we headed back via the public bus at about 9PM to Fira. 

Fira was alive at night (more so than Oia?!) with shops, restaurants, dessert places, and clubs opened till very late. Even the souvenir shops are opened till like midnight! It was awesome. I had wanted some more of that Greek frozen yogurt but couldn’t settle on a place I liked so we ended up going back to our hotel. 

Our hotel was the San Giorgio Villas by the way and it was literally a minute walk to the Fira town square. Of course, Angelo was an amazing part to our stay and if you read the Google reviews, he gets brought up lots. He even talked to the owner the night before since we couldn’t make our first night’s stay and they felt bad. So they pre-emptively gave us 20% off our bill to help us out. The only shortcoming I feel for this hotel was that there isn’t a pool. But the room was nice and very clean, and we got our own little patio. It was also well air conditioned! Which some of our Europe hotels haven’t been. 

We packed up and the next morning we had breakfast at a place called “Bohemia The Journey” nearby. I had kagianas, which was a traditional Greek dish of eggs and tomatoes. It was yummy and well spiced!

Then we did a quick walk up Fira’s winding roads again to see the caldera one more time. Early May is a wonderful time to visit Santorini and the crowds (according to Angelo and our driver) weren’t wild yet. In middle of summer, the island’s 20k ish residents have to accommodate 500k tourists. I think in the future I would like to come back in maybe April so it’s even a little less hot. Shops might be opened for shorter periods, and we might run into more issues with planes landing due to rougher winds. But even in early May, it was a tad hot for me. Still a lovely visit though and I’m so glad we got to go to Santorini during our honeymoon! 

The journey to get here was rough, but literally everyone we met and interacted with during this time was excellent. Whether it was the hotel in Athens that took us in for the night, Angelo, the driver, the bus operators, the spa, or the restaurants—all such nice folks! We got transported by our same driver as our first day back to the airport at 10AM and we said goodbye to the lovely island of Santorini ❤️