Wine and sunsets.

Highlights tour with Wine Tasting and sunset in Oia

Wasn't 100% what I was expecting but fun nonetheless.

So this was a tour of the island. I was expecting the wine tasting to be a bigger part to be honest. Seems that Santorini is made up of a lot of churches and monasteries.  One of these involved rather a lot of climbing, which seemed to wipe out poor flickums . There was a nice fortified town with a labyrinthine street system - Santorini needed a lot of protection from pirates back in the day. It's still occupied although quite a lot of the rooms are air B&Bs

We had a wine tasting. I was expecting this to be a bigger aspect of the tour, involving more than one winery. Still, we were given samples of 4 very nice wines. One of each colour plus a sweet wine. I really liked the sweet one, but felt the urge to buy the white because we have no hold luggage so have to drink it before we return home.

We followed up with a trip to the beach. Not all that keen on Satorini's tourist beaches. The sand is volcanic rock and mostly black. It's actually loose shingle so no black sandcastles here. The beaches are covered in sunbeds, packed as close as it possible. Very little room if you don't want a sunbed.  On the plus side, it does get deep very quickly!

Finally we had Santorini's main tourist attraction - the sunsets!

We could have gone up a to the castle but decided we'd done enough walking and didn't want to fight the crowds. there is a rather nice cafe. They didn't do the usual types of soft drinks though. Fortunately they had nice food and cocktails as well as mocktails and smoothies. It occurred to us that we probably started a little early so found ourselves waiting around a lot for the sun to set, but set it did.

It sure was a fine sunset!

welcome to Volcano Island

Quickie update. I meant to post this yesterday but my craptop decided it doesn't want to boot. I guess that's only to be expected when buying literally the cheapest ever laptop.


So, we're in Santorini! An island formed actually quite recently as a result of a volcanic eruption. The Minoan eruption some 3600 years ago resulted in some serious geological changes, as well as the island's black sands.

Flight out was frustrating. The plane coming in was delayed somewhat by the need to call police to remove an unruly passenger. That meant standing in a queue until he was removed. Then we had to wait for everyone to get off the plane and clean it

We were finally allowed down the stairs; only to be blocked by a door. We were then allowed out to be blocked by a barrier at the boarding steps. Finally we were allowed on board and just had to wait for air traffic control "glitch".

Once we were flying all was fine. Was just boredom to deal with. Went straight out as quick as possible to nab a taxi and checked in.

Checked in by someone who must be manager or owner. Gave us a nice info-dump of the island.

Was initially anxious about hotel but it's really nice. We have a cosy room with a balcony and a seas view. We had a choice of two - the other had a rooftop terrace but I didn't want to go outside onto the roof, or be right next to the road.

Akratiri is just up the road, and while it's not a metropolis, there's plenty of nice looking bars and restaurants.