Travel Review: Santorini, Greece

 200km southeast of mainland Greece lies the beautiful volcanic island of Santorini, its capital Thira hosts some of the most idyllic hotels in the world and is often a hotspot for the rich and famous (the Kardashians visited Santorini earlier this year as part of their annual family holiday).  This summer I was lucky enough to visit the picturesque island and here is my review.

To give you a little bit of a background and to cut a long story short, the island was formed by many large volcanos 1000s of years ago. It consists of three small islands arranged in a circle around the flooded caldera and one of its main unique characteristics are the magnificent rock faces around the island with towns and villages built into the sharp slopes. 

The town of Thira at dusk built into the cliffs overlooking the caldera.

I visited the island at the end of July 2013 for one week with my family, the flight time was a very bearable 3 ½ hours with wonderful views of the Aegean sea and Greek islands on the descent down into Santorini. Quite often on these tiny islands the airports are small, unorganised and busy and Santorini was no exception – a lot of patience is required! The weather was brilliant- around 25⁰C to 30⁰C- and mostly sunny. We stayed in a town called Kamari which is situated on the opposite side of the island to Thira and was only a ten minute transfer from the airport. Our hotel was built into the cliff overlooking the town and sea, it was a small, family run and reasonably priced 4 star hotel. The rooms were basic but comfortable, big and very clean; ours also had a small kitchen and dining area. My only criticism about the hotel would be that the location meant it was quite exposed to strong winds and could sometimes make it a little chilly around the pool area.

We had quite an active week and tried to fit as much into the 7 days as we could. If I explained everything we did this post would be far too long so I will choose my highlights. Probably my favourite day of the holiday was when we took a boat trip across the caldera and went onto the active volcano, we walked around the volcano and learnt the whole history of the island. You could see the smoke from the volcano and feel the heat coming up from the ground; the views were also quite amazing. 

Picture taken from the volcano overlooking the caldera, towards mainland Santorini.

Another highlight was when we went to the far end of Thira as we were told you can see the most beautiful sunset every night. We went to a lovely wine bar high up in the cliffs hanging over the sea and watched the most stunning sunset I have ever seen. We then waked back down into Thira and ate dinner at a very pleasant Greek tavern.

Sunset fromThira

The sunset from Thira with a cheeky glass of vino.

My final highlight was our last night, which also happened to be my birthday. We spent the day relaxing on the beach then in the evening we got dressed up and went out for a few cocktails then ate at a really nice restaurant called Elia. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was perfect.