After all the the excitement of my last post and then Christmas, New Year and just life in general getting in the way, I've not had much time to post.
That's also in part because we went on another adventure in January, but you'll hear more about that next month!
Today, as snow is covering much of the UK, I decided I wanted to throw it back to Summer 2016 when we went to Santorini for a friend's wedding. I've spoken in a previous post about this trip, but today I thought I would talk about one of the days in more detail; specifically the day that we did the boat trip.
Now, I know, I talked about it at some length in my original post, but I wanted to share a few more pictures of this excursion and talk about it more because it was amazing!
The tour we chose to go on was run by Kamari Tours - according to their website, they are the biggest travel agency in Santorini. There are lots of tours offered by various vendors as you walk the beach fronts, but Kamari Tours was recommended by our hotel and we could buy the tickets there so we felt in safe hands that they wouldn't recommend rubbish to us, as it was all too easy for us to come back and complain to them. The tour we had booked was "Caldera & Oia Sunset with King Thiras Boat". The price on their website is currently advertised as €44 and it takes 9-10 hours, so this really is one for the whole day!
There is a bus that picks up from various places around the island - we were picked up from Kamari as that's where we were staying, and then it's a short bus ride round to the port in Athinios where we board King Thira.
Sailing close to the old port of Fira, our first stop was the volcanic island of Nea Kamini. As you disembark, there was a small fee to pay to walk the volcani island, but I don't recall this being anymore that a couple of euros each. The volcano is steep in places, but the views are so rewarding!
I was in awe of the plant life that was growing in places, and as you can see from the last picture, it was a pretty good walk down.
Once lunch was done, we were then taken across towards Oia. From there there were two options (which we had earlier selected when buying our tickets); you can either take the boat back to the original port, or you can climb the stairs to Oia to watch the sunset.
30 minutes after sunset, it was back to the meeting point to board the bus that would take us back to Kamari. We nearly missed the bus as we were still admiring the colours of the sky after the sunset, so it is definitely something to be very conscious of if you decide to do this tour. It was such a truly amazing experience though that I really would recommend this to anyone!
That's also in part because we went on another adventure in January, but you'll hear more about that next month!
Today, as snow is covering much of the UK, I decided I wanted to throw it back to Summer 2016 when we went to Santorini for a friend's wedding. I've spoken in a previous post about this trip, but today I thought I would talk about one of the days in more detail; specifically the day that we did the boat trip.
Now, I know, I talked about it at some length in my original post, but I wanted to share a few more pictures of this excursion and talk about it more because it was amazing!
The tour we chose to go on was run by Kamari Tours - according to their website, they are the biggest travel agency in Santorini. There are lots of tours offered by various vendors as you walk the beach fronts, but Kamari Tours was recommended by our hotel and we could buy the tickets there so we felt in safe hands that they wouldn't recommend rubbish to us, as it was all too easy for us to come back and complain to them. The tour we had booked was "Caldera & Oia Sunset with King Thiras Boat". The price on their website is currently advertised as €44 and it takes 9-10 hours, so this really is one for the whole day!
There is a bus that picks up from various places around the island - we were picked up from Kamari as that's where we were staying, and then it's a short bus ride round to the port in Athinios where we board King Thira.
Sailing close to the old port of Fira, our first stop was the volcanic island of Nea Kamini. As you disembark, there was a small fee to pay to walk the volcani island, but I don't recall this being anymore that a couple of euros each. The volcano is steep in places, but the views are so rewarding!
I was in awe of the plant life that was growing in places, and as you can see from the last picture, it was a pretty good walk down.
Once back on the boat, we headed across to another volcanic island called Palea Kamini, where everyone on the boat was given the chance to swim in the hot springs. I'm not the strongest swimmer in the world, so I opted to stay on the boat and people watch.
From there it was onto Thirasia, where we stopped for lunch. There's also the option to walk up to the village of Manolas, but we decided to conserve our energy for when we reach Oia as we knew we had a big climb to do once we arrived!
I loved that on Thirasia island, pretty much straight off the port is all the quirky little restuarants set up and ready to feed you. It was so lovely to be able to see by the sea and just admire the views. The food was lovely and fresh, although a little expensive. This isn't really surprising though given that you are effectively a captured audience!
Of course, we had to opt to watch the sunset. After a long walk up the steps (seriously, I think it took us about half hour or so, and I had to stop several times to rest as I was incredibly unfit when we did this). There were donkeys that you could pay to ride up, but you hear so many horror stories about how donkeys are abused all over the world, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
I think that this image gives you an idea of the steepness. Yeah, that's me on the left all the way down looking like I'm about to die.
Once up in Oia, we went for a little exploration of the area before stopping for a beer in a bar in the shade. After that it was off to find a spot to watch the sunset that Oia is famous for. Safe to say, we were not disappointed!
30 minutes after sunset, it was back to the meeting point to board the bus that would take us back to Kamari. We nearly missed the bus as we were still admiring the colours of the sky after the sunset, so it is definitely something to be very conscious of if you decide to do this tour. It was such a truly amazing experience though that I really would recommend this to anyone!
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