Day 16 (29/3/14) - Santorini Wine Museum

Entering Santorini's deep, dark winemaking history

Little men pruning in the secret style

A brain pickled in Santorini's finest

OK, so today we ventured to the Santorini Wine Museum, run by the oldest vineyard on the island, established in 1880 by the Koutsoyannopoulos brothers and bearing their name today. Normally cynical about these places this turned out to be genuinely interesting. You enter a 300 metre underground tunnel that has active displays and relics going back to the start of this winery. In fact there are relics from the 1600's when catholic monks from France bought early winemaking techniques to Greece. So for the 7 euro each we got a tour, and tasting of four of their most popular wines.

Torture device or oldest wine press?

The 'double-crusher' , also my old, wrestling name

I want to taste wine, I want it now!

Good drops, great cellar door prices

The first micro-brewery in Santorini

Mezze to get the juices flowing

Green beans in tomato sauce..lovely 

         .......Then by chance we stumbled across the first and only micro brewery in Santorini, the Crazy Donkey. Run by an American lady, it does three beers, an IPA, a dark ale, and a light summer ale, all of which are popular on the island, though we didn't see it served. We sampled all three and all were good, so bought a couple of travellers.
By this stage was well into the afternoon and we hadn't had lunch. We stopped at a local restaurant a bit after 2PM and ended up having one of the best meals of our trip. We lingered over lunch and discussed the state of the Greek economy with the owner and American mate Jimmy, also a resident of Santorini. Many here are of the belief that the political and economic scene are far worse then published in the foreign press.

Some two hours later we rolled out, and continued our coastal drive in the Smart car enjoying the beautiful scenery, all with one eye fixed on the road!

   

Photos above are of our excellent lunch, guaranteed a great review on www.tripadvisor.com

Gina and her 'adopted' friend

   Surreal Santorini post card views. We finished by leaving our mark on Santorini by attaching a lock to the sunset viewing deck. Gina got her wish..... 

There is more to Santorini than meets the eye, but this is the view the world recognises

Day 14 (27/3/14) - Santorini A Foodie's Odyssey

Fava beans and cabbage rolls - traditional of course

2 euro pork gyros - again yummo ....

Chillaxing day in Santorini. A mixture of bar & food hopping. Oh and ouzo on ice in between. So addicted to the ouzo it's not funny! We visualise our next lamb spit as this specialty is something we have become accustomed too.





So we decide to book our ferry trip to Mykonos, the next chapter in our Odyssey. Done, tickets in hand happy days, time now 11am. Whilst sitting in our "local " 2 Brothers I get a text message in Greek. Now 1.00pm. "Excuse me" bar tender lady but "What does this say" I ask? "Oh your ferry has been cancelled due to gas problems" she explains. Gas problems - seriously!. Scull our drinks and make our way back to the ferry ticket office. "Excuse me, but I have received a text message and I cannot read it?". " Oh , there is gas problem with ferry and it has been cancelled,  I can give money back but no ferry for you". Suddenly we are in a Seinfield episode....

No problems, we always said that going with the flow is all we wanted to do. So now we go to Naxos instead. Well that's what we think for now.

Day 15 (28/3/14 - Santorini Wineries

Smart Car meets Good Steerer

So today's leg of our Greek odyssey involved the farther reaches of Santorini and what better way to do it than by car. A small island calls for a small car so we rented the smallest (and cheapest) car we could find, a Smart car. It did the job, but let's say it won't "pull a sailor off your sister!" Gina described driving on Santorini like one of those shooting games. The driver, needs to dodge motorbikes, the odd donkey, stray animals, trucks and buses cutting apexes on hairpins, and any other manner of diversion that the roads can throw at you.  The roads are seriously narrow!

Wisdom...nothing more to be said

So we started at Santo Wines, the biggest producer on Santorini. Santorini. The island is particularly noted for its white varieties, but it also does a seriously good red too. We chose a six-wine sampling platter which included their most noted wines, 3 whites, 2 reds and a sticky. Generous portions ensued, also served with  cheese, olives, a tomato dip and fennel infused crackers. Not bad for 11.50 euro.

Santo Wines Santorini...it's 12 o'clock somewhere!

Gina on the way to 'floppiness'

Gina in full 'floppiness'

A kouloura curl planting formation..google it!

Called 'the secret' the vineyards are not linear. The vines are scattered close to the ground, a method evolved over thousands of years. The local producers have invented a unique way of pruning, the so called koulara (curl) whose shape resembles a round basket that protects the grapes from getting damaged by the island's strong winds. For the wine-trivia buff, Assyrtiko is the most popular white variety in Santorini.

Some blokes attract the bikini babes, not this one!

We tried to visit 3 more wineries, but surprise, they were closed. So we then made our way to the 'black sand beach', which is just that. A more coarse sand than we know in Oz, it doesn't stick to you. There were a few open tavernas in the area so we had an espresso freddo on the beach and played with some of the dogs that found our company to good to pass up. There were quite a few American kids on the beach, but not quite the weather for a dip we thought.

The coastline...the view never gets old

"That's it Andrew, back one more step"

We then made our way along the twists and turns of the coast road, admiring the Kodak-moments on the way to the 'red-sand beach'. It was nice, but an anti-climax compared to its' black counterpart. We left our mark on the beach, then headed back to Fira for dinner before returning to our pad in Oia. One more day left in Santorini, we just can't sing the praises of this island enough.

Leaving our mark on paradise

Day 13( 26/3/14) - Santorini - Playing in the Oia Sun Shine

Paradise on our door step

Peek a Boo ! What's the morning sunrise look like today ?

Oia's picturesque rooftops - just like the postcards!

Oia, much photographed due to it's pretty blue and white houses, is also famous for its' sunsets. So today we enjoyed the sunrise eating our brekkie on the balcony again. A lazy day taking in the beauty, reading, and filling up on Vitamin D. Come 5.30pm we start making our way to the end of the island (only 1km walk) where bus loads of tourists are dropped off to claim their spot for the sunset.

Good morning Santorini

Oia's windmill, now an attraction

What a surprise to find a hint of Paris on the balcony with hundreds of padlocks & ribbons attached to the wrought iron fencing. Mental note, return with padlock. After all its our 25th Anniversary right ? I didn't do it in Paris and still kicking myself. I had myself convinced that it was too touristy. But hell yeah I wanna do it now.

Not getting caught out twice! 

So it's 6.00pm & the crowds have piled in now then out of the blew a clever chap, Jonathan from Seattle, suggests that the crowd bunch up for a group selfie and he would post it on Instagram.

Jonathan from Seattle  

Serenity

Magical evening and happy to say lazy is good.

Day 12 (25/3/14) - Fira, Santorini

Park your ass here - seriously

The island of Santorini 

We awoke to another beautifully sunny, though slightly windy day in Oia, Santorini. After a lovely breakfast we made our way down to the bus stop to take a short ride to the main town of Fira. Today was also the public holiday marking Greek Independence Day.

So, say we wanted to catch a bus to Fira, we would check a timetable first. No problem, the timetable says they are running per normal. Then comes along a man who tells us that buses are not running in the morning, wait until after 1pm, it is a holiday. OK, so be it we think. But we are now close to the bus terminal where we get a further two conflicting reports, official mind you, that buses are not running today, and that they are maybe running today. Bugger me, doesn't someone know what's going on!! As it turns out, buses were running to a normal timetable. We board a bus and for the princely sum of 1.60 euro each we arrive at the tail end of the Fira Independence Day parade. Music, colour, and people everywhere, it was a joy to be part of.

After a stroll through town we lunched on a 2.50 euro gyros each, the lunch of the Gods here, and readied ourselves for the famous walk to the old Port. Now I say famous as the walk consists of 588 cobbled stairs, each with it's own gradient, and requiring 2-3 strides between each. Oh, and it's steep too. The other ways of getting down, or up, are by donkey or cable car. As it was windy, cable car was out of the question. Being animal lovers, we thought riding a donkey was a bit cruel.

Me pointing at Donkeys

The walk down was slow and steady as Gina is still having issues with her damaged foot, what a great workout!. Photos can't really put into perspective how steep the walk is, nor the elevation from top to bottom. That said we gave it a try.

We got to the bottom in 20 minutes or so, and other than a donkey master, were the only ones there. We took a rest, absorbed the serenity and started the climb back up. Donkey master was none too impressed that we would prefer to walk rather than ride one of his fine beasts up the stairs. He swore at us then took off up the stairs with his steeds in tow in an act of defiance to the tourists. What a malaka!

Energised enough for a selfie on way down

Donkey master flat out at work

So going down was easy, going back up took considerably more effort, and time. We did it though and aside from watching out for the fresh donkey-doo, we were proud of our effort. So how does one reward thyself after a Herculean feat like the one we completed, with beer of course, and look at what we came across at the top of the stairs (Damaris and Paul), yep, 2 Brothers.

At Moorabin and now Santorini

Forever the happy chappie

Number of stairs - in case you need reminding

After knocking back a couple of Alfas' each, we got the munchies and went next door for another gyros. Beer and gyros, a match made in heaven heaven.

Ta-Da! We did it