Greece is the word, Santorini version

I know it has been awhile since I have shared remodeling updates but I have a kitchen renovation post coming soon, but in the meantime lets reminisce about our recent trip to GREECE!!!! We went to Santorini, Mykonos, and Athens. I loved everything!

First, a little story about how this trip came about. Originally, we planned to go to Sri Lanka, an up-and-coming travel destination (only a two-hour flight from the Maldives). But, Sri Lanka had other plans and overthrew their government. It was a peaceful overthrow but some of what drove it was a lack of basic necessities like food, gas, and water. We quickly pivoted and found a good flight deal to Greece. The problem is, there are in-season dates and off season dates to visit Greece. We picked the off season dates which was great when we were in Athens and Santorini but almost everything was closed in Mykonos. Looking at the bright side I was able to get so many photos that I otherwise would not have been able to do in the crowded streets.

I have so many pictures so I will break up my posts for each leg of the Greece trip. First up is Santorini. We stayed three nights in Oia (a village in Santorini) at Olvos Luxury Suites. If you stay in Santorini you want to stay at a hotel on the caldera side, the site of the largest volcanic eruption ever recorded – the Minoan Eruption. The views are considered the best. We spent the first day in Oia, the second day in Fira, and the last day on a private wine tasting tour. Here are the views from our room, below. What you can’t see is the steep climb up and down the side of a mountain to get to the hotel.

As I mentioned, we visited in the off-season so many shops and restaurants were closed but it didn’t distract from the beautiful walkways and blue domed buildings. The first day we wandered all through the village of Oia.

For our second day in Santorini we went to the village of Fira. I highly recommend going because we took a bus, which was super convenient and only cost 3 or 4 euros for both of us one-way. Same as Oia, a lot of the shops and restaurants were closed but we found an awesome cocktail bar, called PK Cocktail Bar.

PK Cocktail Bar

On our last day in Santorini we took a private wine tour, visiting 3 different wineries. We got really lucky because this was the last tour before closing up for the season.

Our first stop was to the Koutsoyannopoulos winery and wine museum. We took a self-guided tour of the history of Santorini wine and finished with a tasting. This place was not my favorite. Very odd, they didn’t have their most popular wines as part of the tasting. But, we got a couple cute pictures.

Our second stop on the wine tour was Estate Argyros. This was my favorite stop. I loved the modern design of the winery and the wine tasted the best here. We got a little carried away with our pictures here. Is that Adam doing a meditation pose below?

Our final stop on our winery tour was and I’m embarrassed to say, I can’t remember. We had to walk down a flight of stairs into a cave-like building. The wine wasn’t memorable either so we’ll keep it moving.

An interesting observation about Greece. When we arrived in Santorini and were given a tour of our hotel room we were told DO NOT put toilet paper in the toilet. Where does it go you might ask? Obviously, they are aware of how foreign this is to an American. When you use the restroom you put your toilet paper in the trashcan next to the toilet. The hotel person told us they will empty the trashcan daily. There was also a little magic water wand next to the toilet to clean your derriere.

Santorini is known for their stray cats. We had a couple interesting run-ins with them. They beg horribly bad for food. In the picture below you can see a cat slowly crawling over the glass divider getting ready to jump on our table at dinner.

Also, the cats are everywhere. I went into a store for less than five minutes and came out to find this…Adam, the cat whisperer

I can’t stop screaming from the rooftops how good the food was in Greece. So good in fact, we have almost no pictures to show for it. Here is the list of restaurants we ate at, just in case you plan on visiting Greece sometime soon: Thalami (we ate dinner here twice, the food and drinks were really good, food was Mediterranean) , Oia Gefsis (we had lunch here, a traditional Greek restaurant, we sat outside, I had wine, and had my first introduction to the stray cats), NAOS (we had drinks here), Pelican Kipos (this was such a cute place, with outdoor seating and plants everywhere, we had lunch here in Fira, traditional Greek), Kokkalo (we ate here after our wine tour so dinner is a bit of a blur but they had delicious steak), and Diverso (we had drinks here – meh, felt very commercial, but we were limited on options).

I’ll be back soon with parts two and three from our Greek vacation. We have another trip coming up soon to France and Belgium so I can’t wait to share that experience with you too. Open to any recommendations you have.