We had lunch in another little restaurant which looked to have a good menu in Oia, but the food was a bit disappointing and Ari was really unhappy with her margarita, though the waiter did at first confuse it with a margherita pizza, since she was asking for a strawberry margarita, he managed to catch his error. In the end he invited us to join him for a Carnival like celebration somewhere in mainland Greece (I think). He even gave me his mobile phone number. I think he was hoping for an introduction to one of the beautiful young ladies I was with at the time.
We did find another cool bookshop, The Atlantis Book Store.
It gets its name because Santorini is rumored to be Atlantis. Once the Island was much larger. With an eruption of the volcano (maybe the one that happened around the end of the Minoan civilization), much of it collapsed into the sea. Only the Crescent half of the island is left now. It is conjectured that a Tsunami caused by this eruption, and the following ash, caused the end of the Minoan civilization on Crete. Later in the afternoon we returned to the hotel. I didn't want to sit around the hotel for the rest of the afternoon, so I walked down to the sea on the more sloping side of the Island.
I went through a small village right across the road from our hotel called Finikia. It only had narrow lanes going through it. 
But it had several churches. 
Coming out of Finikia, at the end, there was a path through the fields to the road, the whole side of the hill was terraced with these rock walls. Actually I noticed that almost the whole island was terraced with rock walls.
It was a fairly quick walk down to the beach, and then I walked along the beach for a bit.
I did notice a couple of interesting things. One is that there were doors leading into the cliffs.
They seemed to mostly be under houses, so I suppose they were either storage for the owners of the houses, or they were actually access tunnels to the beach from the houses. I didn't ever figure it out. But some of the poor people's houses in the past used to be (and I think still are) caves dug into the volcanic ash which makes up the island. The trip back up took a bit longer. Not that it was a hard climb, but I stopped off at a winery on the way. They have 6 wines, 3 whites, 1 red, and 2 dessert wines. I did learn here that there are 2 main white grapes grown on the island, though I don't remember the names. They are grown in "baskets" for 2 reasons.
They are self protecting from the wind then. Also since they are not watered, they are able to collect more dew from the air, and water from the pumice in the soil if they are low to the ground.The red wine made there is half from local grapes, which are very tannic, and half from imported grapes. I decided to only try one of the whites, which I enjoyed thoroughly. But I did want to be able to walk up the hill yet. I bought one bottle that day, which we consumed either that or the next evening. It took me about an hour to get up the hill. Also at the winery the lady serving told me that on Friday night there was a special procession to bury Jesus in Pyrgos, and after that they would light a lot of lanterns on the buildings.
So when I got back to the hotel I told Cindy about this. We heard the same from someone else, but hadn't understood it was that evening. So we got everyone together, and off we went to Pyrgos. It was supposed to start at around 9, but we were told to get there at 8:30, which we did. It was packed. We couldn't even get all the way into town to park. But park we did and we went up a small dark alley till we joined the throngs of people climbing the hill to the church at the top. There was a real choke point at the 'castle' which had a small door to go through. I banged my head on a lantern, but wasn't hurt. We continued on up to the top of the hill. It was by now pretty dark, and there wasn't much light. I hadn't taken my camera this evening for 2 reasons. One, I wanted to be able to just enjoy the evening, and two, I didn't think I could hold the camera still enough and didn't want to interrupt with a flash. I could have used a flash, many other people did. I would say about 90% of the people there were Greek, but many of them were not from Santorini.
At about 9, the procession came out of the church, after the bells started ringing. Then rather than going directly down the hill as we expected, it took off around the side of the church. So we got in line. I guess about 20 mins later we had progressed about 30 meters past the church down a narrow walkway. During this time people on the rooftops had lit hundreds of lanterns (I think they were really just cans with paraffin and sawdust). They gave off pretty large flames. Thank goodness the buildings are mostly rock and concrete. Finally after 30-45 mins, we made it around to a point where we could look down over the town. It was an awesome sight. Cindy got some good photos and I hope she gets them posted on Flickr soon.
Then we started down the hill. I think we made it back to the car by about 10:30. There was an incredible line of cars waiting to get out of the town, down the main road. Fortunately we noticed (actually I think it was Maya who pointed it out), that we were just off the side road I had accidentally taken the day before. So we went the other direction and were out of town and on our way through Fira about 10 mins later. I expect it took some people an hour or longer to wait to get down the other way. We pretty much skipped dinner this night as we got home fairly late, just a bit of wine and bread and cheese again.
Saturday morning I woke up before dawn (significantly) and decided to take a walk up the hill behind the hotel and see if I could get any good early morning photos. I did manage to get a few. I also really enjoyed the spring flowers which were blooming everywhere.
And I got to see the sun come up over the island, till it got into the cloud cover. I took about two hours this morning and really enjoyed spending my time wandering alone.
That morning Ari and Maya decided to stay at the hotel. Ari wanted to work on her tan, and Maya wanted to just relax (too much walking in Athens I guess). So Cindy, Isha and I took off for the other end of the Island again. After going up the ridge past the winery, and skipping the turnoff for Pyrgos, we continued down the hill. Somewhere along the way I was supposed to turn right, but we missed the turn, so we went on to the town of Perissa. This is where the main beachfront vacation community is. Many of the tavernas and hotels looked like they were just being opened up for the beginning of the tourist season, or hadn't been touched yet since winter. There were very few people here on the beach, but you could sure tell why this was chosen as the beach hangout. Looks like it could be fun, if you like crowds on the beach in hot weather during July and August. We stopped for a few mins and dipped our feet in the Agean Sea. Not cold, but not really warm enough to swim in since the air wasn't too warm.
So we toodled along the beach and then went back to where we should have turned to get to the end of the island. We managed to go the right way this time and got all the way to the end where there is a lighthouse.
We had to park and walk along a short path to the end of the island. The really interesting part was that due to the angle of the sun, the sea was much clearer, much bluer, and idyllic looking than it had been from Oia. We could see all the way across to Oia,
with the center of the volcano having left some islands in the middle. There are hot springs on one of these islands and there are boat trips there, but you have to swim to them, and the weather was just cool enough we decided not to do this. It was warm enough on Easter Sunday, but the boats weren't running on Easter.Then we made our way back to the hotel and met up with the others. We drove into Oia, and went all the way to the end of town, and down to the port, it was again a narrow windy road. On the way back out of town, we followed the coast along the lower side of the island and came back by the winery I had stopped at earlier. So Ari and Maya decided to walk up the hill, and Cindy, Isha and I tasted the other two whites and a red. Boy was that red tannic, I can tell why they blend it. The whites were nice and we bought two to bring home to India. Fortunately with 4 over the age of 18, we could bring 8 bottles of wine back. That evening we were intending to go to a church. Unfortunately we all fell asleep before it was time to leave, so we missed out on an Orthodox Easter service.
No comments:
Post a Comment