Santorini – Oia & the Black Sand Beach

 

 On Thursday we took a trek to Oia, on yet another ATV (I wish they were road legal in Toronto). We drove out to Oia for lunch and a look around, Oia is famous for their cave homes, houses built right into the cliffs of Santorini that look like the kind of place a Greek hobbit would live. There are no Greek hobbits sadly, or elves, but I think Tolkien, if he was ever here, may have been inspired by the cave houses, all round and carved into cliff sides. 

I ate souvlaki and drank a cold bottle of Volcan, for my nerdy friends this is not a Star Trek beer, but rather a cold blonde beer that is filtered through volcanic rock, kind of amazing really. You can taste the Santorini honey as you sip it, subtle, not too sweet. It’s lovely. 

 

 Walking around Oia there are shops everywhere, jewellry made from volcanic rocks, glass necklaces imported from Venice, beautiful pieces with bejewelled evil eyes staring back at you. But it wasn’t the jewels that inspired me, it was a tiny book shop, Atlantis Books, owned by a man from Memphis, who named his shop dog Billie Holiday. He had shelves and shelves of books, including quite a few rare pieces, like a signed first edition of a Shel Silverstein book, and a first edition of The Petit Prince. I wonder how many rare book collectors would die for novels the likes of which this store had. Probably a lot. Unfortunately the store may be sold, they have a few weeks to come up with 1 million Euro to buy the place from their landlord and they are looking for any help they can get. I told him Kickstarter… because the internet would love him. Imgur would love him. Twitter would love him. I left him my card and suggested he get in touch, it would break my heart if such a magical little store were forced to close. 

After exploring Oia, we headed back to Fira, not before getting lost for an hour on the ATV and getting yelled at by an old Greek man. He kept putting his fingers to his eyes, I see you, we know, we’re lost. Eventually we found our way back to a main road and made it back to Fira. We sat down at Cafe Irina, overlooking the sea and watched the sun set while sipping on prosecco. Meg would be proud, whenever we get together we end up going through a couple bottles of prosecco. 

 

Yesterday, with better instructions, we headed to Perissa, where the black sand beach is. It’s hard to believe that today is our last full day here, but on Sunday at 8:30 AM we’ll board the ferry back to Athens… it’s a 6 hour ride. Then on Monday morning we’ll board an Air Transat flight back to Toronto. Time flies when you’re exploring the world. 

See you soon TO.