Sunset in Oia and Last Night in Santorini

For sunset everyone said to go north to Oia, which is the village where all of the iconic white-stucco pictures of Santorini are taken. I can’t even describe it … tons of houses/apartments/cafés all in smooth, rolling white stucco built into the cliffs. But it was absolutely deserted like a ghost town, and almost every single door & window were padlocked. But it was so perfect that it felt like we were in a Disney movie set or something. Here are some views of Oia:































In Oia we found one cafe that was open, and they told us to walk to the nearby village to find the one tavern that was open. But this turned out to be yet another really enjoyable, traditional Greek meal. The server was a super-talkative Greek named Nikos, and he highly recommended that we start with the fava bean appetizer, which was an amazing warm fava bean spread with lemons, onions, and olive oil. Tina had lamb, I had a pork/beef/lamb burger, and we split a carafe of sweet white Santorini wine. After the meal he brought us a couple rounds of rosé dessert wine made on the island. The restaurant was actually in a former winery building; the backroom was used for stomping the grapes, whose juice then flowed into underground vaults in the current dining room. Today there are glass circles on the floor that you can look into to see the old storage tanks. It was very cool, and once again there were only locals eating there. Although a lot of things are closed in February, we’ve gotten a much more intimate intro to the people & culture this way. They have gone out of their way to talk to us about traditions/culture/food/history/etc and for this experience, it is worth coming in the low season … wouldn’t trade that for anything. And several different locals have told us to come back in September; apparently it’s perfect timing at the end of the busy season, so prices slightly go down, but the locals are happy with their “fat purses” after summer and are now ready to have a good time themselves! So we’ll be back in September … aiming for 2009!

Taverna in Finikia

Our last night in Santorini we met up with Diomos and Kiriakos to go to the local jazz bar for a chill evening. There was a fun DJ, and the bartender brought us over warm, spiced raki which was tasty! But we went home relatively early based on the previous late night.