The Half Time Show: Santorini

The view from the balcony of my room

I’ve not created an entry for each day at Santorini because that’s not how the time was planned or spent. This section of my trip was the actual holiday bit; relaxing, refreshing, recuperating. I think, as I write this, that it has worked. I like Santorini, but I’ve only seen one side of it, the quiet side.

The ghost town Perrias

Winter (November – March, inclusive) is “off-season” and Santorini is a ghost town. Seriously, more than half the shops and hotels in Thira (largest town) were closed and in Perrias and Oia (villages at each end of the island), the percentage was more like 90%; genuinely a ghost town. Shops and hotels are boarded up and there is hardly anyone on the street.

My hotel, the Suites of the Gods (www.suitesofthegods.com) is suitably luxurious although short of 5-star. Its location is fantastic, for the view, but a little isolated for doing things. That suited me as ‘doing things’ wasn’t high on the list, but it was a little limiting for some stuff (e.g. eating out). The staff was helpful and Eva, the receptionist and on-site manager, had excellent English and was keen to help me make the most of my stay. The other staff were always polite and helpful, although the level of English fell off pretty steeply. But, hey, they all had more English than I had Greek!

Is it just me, or does this guy look
like George Colambaris (with hair)?

My days fell into a quite easy and pleasant routine. I would wake, shower and shave and be ready for my breakfast to be delivered to my room (the hotel’s restaurant was closed for the Winter!). I would sit eating that and watching the BBC World News; quite a civilised start to my day. It being winter, the weather was never quite warm enough to eat breakfast outside, and most days there was a wicked wind blowing that certainly cancelled that plan. During the morning, I would ‘do something’; one day it was walk around Thira window shopping (where I could) and actually buying something too (souvenirs and some new cufflinks); one day it was a walk up to the highest point in Santorini, where the views were spectacular; and one day it was a walk around Oia and a bus ride across the island’s spine.
Santorini is almost a cliché of itself. The steeply-built houses are perched on the edge of the caldera. Both Thira and Oia offered ‘classical’ views of such housing. Most of it is, these days, somehow commercially oriented: places to stay, places to eat and drink, or places to party. In the off-season, construction and refurbishment is underway. In Pyrgos, a village high-up in the centre of the island, the same architectural approach is taken, but there is less tourist-oriented use of the buildings (less, not none, mind you).

Scenes from Thira

Some items in the Thira Museum

Pyrgos and the Mountain

The Mountain (from hotel)

Pyrgos

A private chapel/church

Santorini, looking East

Santorini, looking West

Santorini, looking South

Oia

The view from Demilmar

Demilmar interior

Each day I was driven down to Perrias by the hotel’s driver to have lunch at Demilmar, a café/restaurant/night club also owned by the same guy who owns Suites of the Gods. It is one of the few places open in Perrias and has a fantastic position right at the end of the black sand beach. The venue is just wonderful; I loved it. The food served there was also a treat. It was fresh, cooked beautifully, and served by the island’s most beautiful women! So, each day I would have a leisurely lunch in this exotic venue enjoying the view out over the Mediterranean, the buzz of the local crowd which varied in size each day, although it is clearly the well-to-do set that meets at Demilmar, and reading a book I’d borrowed from the hotel that was coincidentally about an archaeological adventurer doing stuff around the story of the rise of civilisation in the Mediterranean eight thousand years ago.

Sunsets

I would be collected by the driver at 3pm or 4pm, depending on what I’d arranged and then return to the hotel to while away the afternoon/evening, usually updating my blog (that slow process), or reading, or watching a little TV. I was routinely in bed by 9pm.

Having a wonderful lunch in the late-middle of the day turned out to suit me well as my one attempt to find somewhere to eat at night had not gone well. Eva had told me that there was a Mexican restaurant (called Zorba’s!) next door to the winery, which was essentially next door to the hotel (up the hill a bit), probably only 10mins walk. So, my first night I set off in a very cold wind in the dark to find this place. It turned out to be a long walk because I went the wrong way and the restaurant was only ‘next door’ to the winery in the sense that it was the next thing along the road; 500m along the road! When I did get there, Zorba’s was closed; for the winter. Anyway, the walk back was quicker as I’d worked out where I’d navigated wrongly.

Fortunately, I’d decided to get myself some food for snacks and meal replacement from a nearby ‘bakery’ (read, food-oriented general store). My dinner meal turned into turkey and cheese sandwiches with pistachios and scorched almonds as starters or dessert. With a little refinement, that was the meal each evening. That arrangement further reinforced the large, lovely meal at Demilmar each day.

Me and Theona

I managed to squeeze two wonderful massages into this busy schedule, both provided by the gorgeous Theona, my favourite waitress from Demilmar (the picture does her no justice). The massage was provided in the spa that is attached to the hotel. The spa is a cave built into the rockface and fronted by the hotel. It fives down from the entry and one is treated in a small, warm room well inside the cliff. It was quite a treat and quite a magical place they’ve made there.

One of the defining characteristics of architecture in Santorini is the lack of handrails or other safety-related structures in a precipitous place. Of course, the place is gorgeous and evokes wonder. It could never be repeated in Australia as the necessary safety arrangements and signage would completely ruin the vista and the feel of the place! I envy the Greeks their more relaxed view of such things and their clear lack of a fear of heights or edges! Even at the hotel, some of the terrace handrail arrangements were pretty meagre and the cliff-face fell away directly under the hotel buildings.

A vineyard

Terraced hillside

The main districts clearly rely on tourism. There is little of the quaintness one might associate with a ‘normal’ village that happened to welcome tourists. There is some sense of that in the villages that are not on the edge of the caldera or the beach and the vast farmland areas are probably more ‘quaint’. Which reminds me, a key product of Santorini is wine; nice wine, it turns out! However, unlike places like Clare Valley, the Barossa Valley, or even local Canberra wineries, there are no fields of rows of vines on trellises. In Santorini, the vines grow in ‘rounds’ on the ground; rows and rows and rows of them, all of which are hand-pruned and hand-picked in what must be back-breaking work. Having experienced the wind in the area, I suspect that it is better for the vines to be low-lying. It is also clear that cultivation has been going on for a long time. The only places that are not terraced by rock walls are the cliff-faces where there is no soil. Everything else is either agricultural or residential/business.

It has been a great holiday on Santorini. Perhaps not quite the luxurious relax that I’d initially imagined, but certainly relaxing and very enjoyable. I would love to return to see the place when it is busy. I suspect that the vibe when it’s in full party-swing would be sensational. However, I might only visit for a short time then. I like the slow relaxed feeling of the place that it has now.