Fira to Oia Walk

Friday, April 25th, 2014, Santorini
Yesterday morning we had breakfast on our balcony. The hotel doesn't include breakfast but does have good coffee, good orange juice and a big breakfast cake in the lobby that we can take back to our room our up to the roof terrace. Anita enjoyed a decent coffee for a change since most hotels and restaurants in Turkey and Greece serve Nescafe. In bigger cities, there are Starbucks outlets but an ordinary coffee costs 4 euros ($6), which seems a little much.
Although it was a bit misty, we started off from our hotel at 9:40 am for the cliff edge walk from the town we're in, Fira, to the other town on Santorini called Oia, which is either a 9 km or 12 km walk. We've been told both distances. Through town, we went up and down lots of steps along the edge of the cliff. The more expensive little hotels cling to the edge of the cliff because they're selling the view of the caldera and the sunsets.

 Fira and the old port below.

 Donkeys are still used to carry tourists and luggage up from the old port, although most tourists arrive at the new port about 1 km south of town, where there's a road that snakes up the cliff. Our hotel manager warned us never to ride a donkey down the hill, only up, because sometimes they slip. It's dangerous.

 Many of the churches have blue domes. All the white painted stucco and blue roofs is very beautiful.

 The weather gradually cleared as we walked along the path. The wind was very strong which was probably a good thing so we didn't get too hot. We had lots of water and our lunch with us, which we ate along the trail. We met about 30 or 40 fellow walkers all day. Most of the time we were completely alone. The path was usually very steep, either up or down so we took our time, enjoyed the view and rested whenever we wanted.

 Santorini is a fairly narrow arc. Before the big eruption in 1613 BC or so, it used to be a typical round cone-shaped volcanic island. Then the middle exploded into the atmosphere so now just one side of the outer rim is left plus a few smaller islands on the other side of the rim. The view was fantastic along the rim, down the cliff to the water and also down the slope on the other side. We also enjoyed being able to see how far we'd come all day.

Another tourist we met took a picture of us at  a little church on a high point overlooking the caldera.

 Finally we arrived in Oia.

 Like Fira, there are little hotels with decks and small swimming pools all arranged down the side of the cliff. Very pretty. We walked through Oia for a while, past lots of little expensive shops, then took the 2:30 pm bus back to Fira. We had really enjoyed the walk (hike? trek? - when do those words apply? Do we need different shoes? Hiking sticks?)

 After a rest on our balcony and dinner at a restaurant called "Nicholas" in Fira, we walked out to the cliff edge at dusk. Sunset in Santorini is famous. It is very beautiful but not a whole lot different from watching the sunset over any lake or ocean. Sometimes at home we go by boat out to Kamaniskeg Lake to watch the sunset there. It's just as nice. We had to laugh at all the tourists in a complete frenzy getting pictures of themselves against the sunset. When you do that, all you see is a silhouette of yourself and the sun, as above. You could be almost anywhere.

To us, it made a bit more sense to show some of Santorini in the picture. We did get a Canadian tourist to take the sunset picture of both of us but, like everyone else, we were just 2 black figures against the red ball of the sun.