Greece!

We just had to squeeze in one more trip sans kiddos so Geoff and I went to Santorini, Greece last weekend! It was gorgeous!! Even though it was still chilly (just the start of the season), Greece was on our "to do" list when we first moved over. The views were stunning of course and the food was delicious! It is always nice to get away with just the two of us, so we of course want to thank Nannie for holding down the fort back in London - thank you!!! :)

Once again, I took an obscene amount of pictures (how can you not??) so I tried to cull them down for the blog...still managed to get plenty on here though ;)

We flew in to Athens on Friday and our flight to Santorini was cancelled due to strong winds (we felt these winds as we got close to Athens and it was scary!). So we spent the night in Athens and got to Santorini first thing Saturday morning!






We rented a cave house in Oia (at the northern tip of the island). The village is known for its beautiful sunsets!








Geoff and our landlord carrying our bags down all the steps! Lots of steps on this trip!!






Our cute house on the side of the cliff :)





View from inside!






Drawbacks to a cave house: a) cannot stand up in the bathroom b) it can get cold in there with no heat!




Views from our porch.




They were finishing up painting the island...they have to do this each year at the beginning of the season! You can tell in the pictures what has or hasn't been painted yet...












Views from our lunch table - just amazing! :)










Greek food...yum!














Our landlord left some wine and goodies in our house for us!






Cute donkey doing his day job :)










We did some wine tasting and found this cute family winery. It has been in the family for three generations and this guy was so nice! We drove up and he stopped playing with his little girls to give us a quick tour and tasting :)














Giada was here stomping grapes! :)




You know I love doorways...




The owner, he was so nice!



We checked out Santo wines (much bigger) next...




Can't beat the views!







I guess we are getting old...it was too cold/windy to sit outside!










So we went to "sunset point" each night. Beautiful!



















On a recommendation, we ventured off the beaten path to this restaurant. We were the only ones there and pretty sure no one else came in the rest of the night! The owner cooked our delicious meal and we had the whole place to ourselves! One of the perks of traveling off season...












Hole in the wall on our descent down to the docks...




The stairs were covered in donkey poo...we got a workout on our 25 minute walk all the way down.






We took a boat tour to the volcano for a hike!










The volcano crater.




We were told several times to bring water and wear comfortable shoes to hike to the top...I guess she missed that?? :)








After Geoff's joke about how I was his donkey, I let him carry my bag for a while ;)














The boat stopped for anyone that wanted to swim in the hot springs. Unfortunately, this time of year it wasn't so hot. It was freezing cold!! So this was as far as I got in...about 4 or 5 brave people actually swam!




Those are the hot springs behind me...would be fun to do in the summer!








If you look close you can see the zigzag of the stone steps that go all the way to the top. And the cable car next to it. Guess which one we did??






Yep, we walked all the way back up! We thought it would be a fun way to get some exercise but I must be way out of shape because it was so hard! Geoff of course wanted to time us from the start (it took us 19 minutes by the way). Some excerpts from our convo: G, "C'mon, we can't let those people on the donkeys pass us!", S, "I am dying and I can't breathe!", G, "You can do this, you're the only girl!", S, "Please stop talking to me"




But we made it! My face is bright red and Geoff barely broke a sweat :) We rewarded ourselves with a fantastic lunch!












One more pretty sunset...:)