14 Oct, Wednesday – Santorini: Ancient Thera & Oia

Wednesday was our day traveling Santorini by car. The weather was good but still a little breezy. We got a pastry at a local bakery,

and then walked up the street to Hertz car rental. Richard had wanted to drive one of the Smart cars and Hertz had one parked out front. Shortly we were Smart-ly motoring about the island. The first thing on our agenda was Ancient Thera, but along the way we stopped to take pictures of a couple of churches.

Richard drove and I navigated as best I could with my sixteen-year-old map of Santorini. The map was fairly accurate, and though we made a couple of wrong turns, we were soon going up the switchbacks. I had gone up on a small motorbike when I was first here, and I was skeptical that the little car could get the job done, but it did just fine. It was a white-knuckle ride for me because I’m afraid of heights, and the drop off at the side of the road kept getting steeper and steeper. Very few guardrails. The picture below is of Kamari as seen from the parking lot at Ancient Thera. Note the Santorini airport in the upper left. The ancient town was built on the top of a mountain to make it safe from pirates.

When I was there before, I they had was a dirt parking lot. Now they had an actual visitors’ center, and we had to pay. Before, it was free. They also had a paved walkway up to the beginning of the ruins. First, we saw the small stone church.

The mountain upon which the ruins of Ancient Therea reside separates the towns of Kamari and Perissa.

After Richard finished his artwork, we made the trek back down the mountain to our car and drove back along the road to a red sand beach, after which we headed north.

We drove to the northern part of the island to the town of Oia. Instead of trying to describe it, I’ll just provide you with a series of pictures:

We ate an early dinner at a taverna in Oia. I had a very delicious 4 cheese tortilini, and Richard had dolma (stuffed vine leaves). We both had a Mythos beer. At home in Healdsburg, I had recently been drinking non-alcholic beer (<.5%) because my system (with CFS) won’t tolerate alcohol. We determined that Mythos seems to have less alcohol that non-alcoholic beer in the States, so I regularly had a Mythos at dinner to no effect.

After we got back to the hotel that evening, I went down to the travel agency and again asked about the hydrofoil to Mykonos. “Come back tomorrow morning. We will be able to tell you then.