Now THAT’s an island
Our 2-week trip is based largely on Air Transat’s Islands & Legends tour, with half the time spent on Greece’s islands and the other half in the mainland. But even though we’d already spent 2 days on an island, Crete is really too big to feel like an island. The only hint of it are the harbours. Today’s the day we’ve been waiting for - Santorini is the epitome of the Greek islands, especially for honeymooners. Moreover, we’d decided to splurge on accommodation in Santorini. So we were excited to see our villa as much as the island itself.
The first things that we saw upon arriving at the new port of Santorini were rental car companies. People were soliciting for business as we passed by each company. Although I did prepare myself for driving in Greece (I got an international driving permit one day before leaving), it was more for the second half of our trip in the Peloponnese. For whatever reason I wasn’t really mentally prepared to drive in Santorini, so I was 50-50 about it. I guess I was hesitant about driving on narrow hilly streets and concerned about finding parking in such a touristy place.
We casually walked into the first rental company and got a quote of 30 euros per day. When we got the same quote at the second company, we concluded that the rates must be the same everywhere. Chris casually asked if we could have a deal at 25 euros, and immediately regretted not asking for a deeper discount when the salesman agreed to it.
We asked for the smallest car available, and drove to a parking lot in Imerovigli, the highest town in Santorini where our villa is located. Hotels and villas on the island are only accessible by car up to a certain point, since they are all packed against the steep cliff face of Santorini’s caldera. A poorly-drawn map at the parking lot seemed to indicate every hotel location, except for ours. We must have spent 15 minutes walking around the same streets before finding a sign for our hotel in a side street.
I was very happy with our room and couldn’t stop taking photos from every corner of it. Chris was getting annoyed and hungry as it was well past lunch time. It was after 2:30pm by the time we drove to Perissa to have lunch. Beaches were only nice-to-have items on our itinerary as they are time consuming to get to by public transportation. So with a car in hand we decided to make good use of it by visiting the black sand beach at Perissa, followed by the red sand beach after lunch.
We heard that the weather in the days prior to our arrival was iffy, so we were very happy that it was hot and sunny in the afternoon. But by the time we left the red beach the unsettled weather returned. It was cloudy, windy and cool. Our villa supposedly offered an uninterrupted view of the setting sun, and our plan was to watch it from there tonight. But it was not to be. Thick clouds had moved in. By the time we sat down for dinner, it was raining.
On a brighter note, Chris made a fantastic pick for dinner at Saltsa. We had snails as appetizer, risotto and veal shank as main courses, topped off with a very unique “loukoumi” ice cream.
Oops of the day: on our way to dinner, I attempted to take a short cut but realized that it was too narrow for our car. While backing up I managed to scrape the driver’s side rear-view mirror against a wall 
