I don’t need to tell you Santorini is in the Greek islands, I may have needed to tell some readers that Tirana is the capital of Albania. As I wrote the title of this post I thought I could call it from the sublime to the ridiculous or even heaven to hades:) We arrived in Santorini only 2 hours late, courtesy of SeaJet Challenger. As we have learned this is more the norm than the extraordinary.
Our room at Tzekos Villas was delightful one we got to it. When booking I had noted that it was inside the caldera requiring steps up to the entrance and then down to reception and finally the room. The van could not get anywhere near the entrance and the hotel sent a porter to carry the luggage, no cart, must his strong and and legs. Following him up to the entrance was exhausting, down to our room, an upgrade to include more space and private jacuzzi left us wondering how we would leave and return for meals and excursions. We did find the strength for several round trips. It would seem that most of caldera view hotels have similar situations. We saw a lot of porters and 2 wheeled hand carts moving luggage. I should note that the very lovely room lacked some essentials. There were no reasonably placed outlets not any usable tables or other flat surfaces. The jacuzzi was contaminated with oils and lotions from prior thoughtless guests and need to be dumped, cleaned and refilled. Breakfast was barely adequate.
After our late arrival and first trip on the stairs, we found our way to a place that was said to specialize in fava bean spread. They were out, but we stayed and had a nice lunch at Theona’s Kitchen anyhow. We spent the rest of the day walking through the shopping area of Fira stopping to admire the caldera views. We returned to our room to rest and enjoy the jacuzzi on our deck with a great view of the caldera and total privacy. We had dinner on a deck with a view of the sunset over the volcano in the middle of the caldera.
For our second day in Santorini we took the local bus to Oia on the northern end of the Island. Again the entertainment was walking through the shops and eventually eating at Strogili. Always adventurous with food choices I ordered stuffed squid. I had a bit of a surprise when this was delivered
