Saturday we still had several hours with our rental car. After an early breakfast we headed out to drive to the other end of the island, stopping at Amoudi, a tiny fishing village below Oia. In the background you can see the 214 steps up to Oia. 

From there we drove to the other side of the island where the land meets the sea in a more traditional way. It has a very different feel from the area overlooking the Caldera. I loved this hillside of traditional round homes.

We have good friends who travel to Santorini almost every year. Rick told us that the one  must-do on our trip was to walk the cliff trail from Immerovigli to Oia. (Actually the trail goes all the way from Fira to Oia.) And Rick was correct, it was a highlight of our stay there. It was the clearest day we’d had and the views along the trail were gorgeous. In the first photo you can see Oia in the distance. You can easily walk the trail in a couple of hours, but we stopped so often to enjoy the views and take photos that it took us nearly three hours.

There are several churches along the trail.

Oia is a bit less touristy than Fira, and like Pygros has lots of photographic opportunities. We found several gifts in Oia’s shops, had a lovely lunch, and enjoyed walking through the town.

Here you have a view of the 214 steps down to Amoudi from above. And an alternative to walking back up all those stairs.

We rode the bus back to our hotel, and had a lovely dinner at our hotel. Although there wasn’t a formal dining room, the hotel kitchen and menu were excellent. We had several lunches there and two excellent dinners.

On Monday, our last day on the island,  we took a cab to Fira to visit the Santozeum which I shared in an earlier post about Akrotiri. 

Fira caters to the tourists who visit from the many cruise ships who dock at Santorini for a day. It’s the most commercial of all the towns, and our least favorite. It wasn’t, however, as crowded and busy as we’d been led to expect. After visiting the Santozeum, we had a lovely lunch overlooking the Caldera, and enjoyed walking through the shops where we found the last couple of gifts we hoped to purchase for friends and family.

Our last lunch in Santorini overlooking the Caldera. 

I’ll end our visit with one of the beautiful sunsets we enjoyed from our hotel.

We’ve come to the end of the travel posts from our trip to Europe. This weekend we’re off on a domestic road trip to visit Sarah, Adam, and Caleb in Wilmette, IL. Adam’s Installation Service for his new position at the Winnetka Presbyterian Church is this Sunday. We’ll be celebrating with all of his family, who we haven’t seen in quite awhile, as well as many of his extended family who live in the midwest. 

It’s another photo-heavy blog post, but I hope you won’t mind.

When we left Akrotiri, we drove out to the end of the island, stopping at a lovely taverna for lunch. Then we headed to Pyrgos. Pyrgos is situated in the middle of the island on a hill. In the foreground, you can see fields of cherry tomatoes for which Santorini is famous.

The town itself has just a couple of streets for automobiles, but many walkways and stairs that lead you about the town.

I wasn’t prepared for the beauty of Pygros. It turned out to be my favorite place for photographs. There were three lovely churches, and although I took photos of the names of them, even with internet help, I haven’t been able to determine which is which for sure.

This is St. Nicholas. If I enlarge the photo enough I can read the name beside the door. Here’s a look inside the church, the only one that seemed to be open.

There were a whole series of these beautiful paintings along the walls of the church as you entered.

I love the simplicity of this shot, one of my favorites from the trip.

A year or so ago, I took an online photography course with Kat Sloma called “A Sense of Place.” Here are some of my favorite photographs from Pygros that capture that perfectly.

This donkey was patiently waiting for his owner outside a little shop, quite a ways up the walkway.

Someone along the way had told us about a winery museum not too far from Pygros. Although we had dinner reservations at Selene’s in Pyros later that evening, we had time to visit the wine museum which was quite interesting. A series of dioramas told the story of the family’s history on Santorini since their immigration there in the 1800’s. 

We returned to Pyros for dinner at Selene’s with a couple we met on the ferry from Athens to Santorini. Selene’s is reputedly one of the best restaurants in all of Greece, and we would agree it was exceptional. We opted to eat in the less expensive Wine and Meze Bistro, but the ambiance, service, and presentation were equal to any fine restaurant we’ve eaten in. It was the best meal of MANY good meals we had in Greece. Here’s a glimpse of some of the terrific food we ate while in Santorini.

Photo template by Rebecca Cooper

Two of our favorite mezes were the fava bean dip on the top left, and the tomato fritters on the top right. I’ve found a great recipe for the tomato fritters, and am hoping our friends will come home from Santorini later this month with a recipe for fava bean dip from their favorite restaurant. We ate there as well, and the fava bean dip there was the best we had. They’ve become friends with the owners and were quite sure Vicki would be willing to share the recipe. Oddly enough, they’ve never tried fava bean dip although they’ve traveled to Santorini many times.

On Sunday we hiked from Imerovigli to Oia, and I’ll be back soon with the last of the vacation posts.

It’s taken me awhile to get all the vacation posts written and organized. One advantage from my point of view is getting a chance to relive the vacation. These next few posts are pretty photo-heavy, but I hope you won’t mind when you see how incredibly beautiful Santorini is.

Santorini has long been on my bucket list. Once I knew we were going to Istanbul to visit Rachel and Juan, I decided we absolutely had to include Santorini on the itinerary. Santorini is listed on many of the “Top Places to Photograph” lists, and I was not disappointed. It is truly a beautiful spot.

 We decided to use a group called Homeric Tours to provide transportation and book our hotels for us once we left Istanbul. Although it definitely increased the price of the trip, it was worth every penny not to have to worry about transportation. And I know we saved a lot of time! In addition, we stayed in much nicer hotels in Athens and Imerovigli than we would have booked on our own.

 Santorini has three major towns that overlook the Caldera: Fira, Imerovigli, and Oia. Of the three, Imerovigli is the least crowded, but also has very few shops and services beyond restaurants, hotels, and a couple of small groceries. Our hotel was about a twenty minute walk up a steep hill from Imerovigli, but was situated in the center of the Caldera overlooking the sea. Here is the view of Imerovigli from our hotel. It’s the village at the very top of the hill. Between our hotel and the town were other hotels and restaurants.

And the view of the Caldera, with Oia in the distance.

A panoramic view:

Each morning our breakfast was delivered to our room or poolside.

The first day, we simply relaxed by the pool, and walked into Imerovigli to buy some wine, cheese and crackers to have in our room.

The first two days we were on the island it was incredibly windy. In fact, the second day some of the ferries were cancelled, and the guests expected at the hotel were not able to get there. Tracy decided to rent a car so we could explore the island. I was a bit reluctant since the roads are barely wide enough for two cars in the best of spots. He had to promise he wouldn’t pass any buses. (Our taxi driver passed two tour buses driving up from the ferry on a road filled with hairpin turns. I wasn’t sure I’d live to see Santorini. And I thought the traffic in Istanbul was bad!) Tracy did a great job, and we saw a lot more of Santorini than we would have without the car.

 Our first stop was the ruins of Akrotiri. The ruins have been closed for nearly six years after the roof over them collapsed. We were thrilled that they were once again open to visitors. Akrotiri was built during the Minoan Bronze Age (20th century to the 17th century B.C.) It’s believed that the settlement was buried by a volcanic eruption around 1500 B.C. It’s amazingly well preserved, and some gorgeous frescoes were discovered and put back together again by the archaeologists.

Akrotiri was rediscovered in the 1950’s and the excavation began in the 1960’s. It’s believed that there must have been some warning prior to the earthquake that buried the town. Most of the inhabitants, believed to be in the tens of thousands, escaped. They had developed both a sewer system as well as an aqueduct that brought fresh water to the settlement. It really was mind-boggling to consider.

None of the frescoes are on display in Akrotiri. On the last day of our stay, we visited the Santozeum in Fira which houses reproductions of the frescoes. The Santozeum is a beautiful, modern museum with a fabulous view of the Caldera. One of the most fascinating films I’ve seen in a long time, detailed how the archaeologists numbered the tiny pieces and then had them scanned by 3-D scanners (at Yale and Princeton if my memory serves me well). They were then able to match the pieces like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The originals are housed in a museum in Athens, but we didn’t have time to visit when we were in Athens. 

Here is a look at a few of the frescoes reproduced at the Santozeum.

More to come . . .

We took a lovely road trip yesterday, but before I share some photos from that and catch up with my 52/50, I wanted to finish up the photos from our short stay in Athens.

After lunch on the first day, we visited the Central Market. In Istanbul, I was surprised to see sheep’s heads, tripe and intestines displayed in all the butcher shop windows. Here the whole animal was hanging from the hooks.

Athens, like Istanbul, has created a pedestrian mall–here part of Ermon Street. 

We watched as a travel video was being filmed here. The poor narrator repeated his steps at least six times as we watched. I had no idea how tedious making one of these travel videos must be!

Graffiti is everywhere in Athens. Tracy was quite put off by it, but I enjoyed photographing it.

We finished our day at a lovely rooftop restaurant, Psarras, recommended by friends.

As the sky got dark, a full moon appeared–a very romantic end to the day.

The next morning we left by ferry for Santorini from Piraeus.

After our time on Santorini (blog posts to come) we spent our last afternoon in Athens visiting the New Acropolis Museum. It’s a beautiful building, and we were fascinated to see it’s been built over one of the excavation sites.

Photographs were not allowed in the main exhibition, but were allowed in other parts of the museum. So much of the beautiful art was plundered by conquerors over the years, but what has survived is fascinating. 

After supper, we walked down to Hadrian’s Gate (132 A.D.), or the Arch of Hadrian. The arch originally spanned an ancient road, and inscriptions were found honoring both Hadrian and Theseus as founders of Athens. I like that you can see the Acropolis through the gate in this photo.

Given our short time in Athens, we managed to get a glimpse of some of the ancient history I enjoyed reading about through myths and in social studies classes. The monuments here make some of the ancient sites in Istanbul seem like youngsters.

By the time I finished the posts about Istanbul, summer was in full swing, and it was a busy one. Istanbul was just the first half of our trip, so I’m back now to finish up the travel posts over the next week or so.

From Istanbul, we flew to Athens and had a day and a half there before we left for Santorini. On our way home we spent another afternoon and evening there. We concentrated our time on the Acropolis and the Agora.

The first evening we just walked through the Plaka, browsing through the shops and grabbing a bite to eat in one of many restaurants. Although the guide books suggest avoiding these restaurants, we found the food to be reliably good and reasonably priced. Not once during our whole trip did I have a meal I didn’t like. I could eat Greek and Turkish cuisine every day!

Many of the shops are filled with inexpensive touristy wares, but we did find a few shops with high quality merchandise and were able to purchase some lovely gifts. In this shop the merchant is the artist herself. We purchased one of her hand-painted plates of ancient Olympic runners for Adam.

After a fabulous buffet breakfast at our hotel the next morning, we headed to the Acropolis. 

The main buildings on the Acropolis–the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the Erechtheion and the temple of Athena Nike–were all built during the mid-fifth century BC. That anything remains is truly a miracle. When I was here 40+ years ago, there wasn’t much going on in terms of reconstruction. Now the temples share space with cranes and construction workers who are working to maintain these historical treasures.

The Erechtheion

And the beautiful Caryatid Porch.

I took the next photo for Inspired, a class by Katrina Kennedy. May’s assignment was “forced perspective,” and we were able to line up a postcard with the Caryatid Porch. A fun assignment while on vacation.

The Parthenon

And one of the few photos of the two of us on the trip.

Odeion of Herodes Atticus–love the iPhone panorama

As we walked down from the Acropolis to the Agora, we passed an archaeological dig. It’s amazing to me that the antiquities continue to be uncovered.

The ancient Agora is often considered the birthplace of democracy. As you walk through the Agora today (basically deserted the day we were there), it’s fun to imagine how it must have looked so many years ago when it was the bustling political center of the city.

The Church of the Holy Apostles is one of only two structures still intact. It was built in the late 10th century during the Byzantine era.

A lovely fresco in the Church of the Holy Apostles

The Agora Museum is housed in the Stoa of Attalos, originally constructed around 150 B.C. It was discovered in the late 1800’s and reconstructed to house the excavations from the Agora in the 1950’s.

In fear of overload, I’ll leave you here for today, and will be back soon with the rest of our stay in Athens.