Santorini, Greece

By far one of my favorite places in the world. Santorini is exactly what I think of when I think of Greece. White washed houses with blue dome roofs lining the Adriatic Sea. As we approached the Greek Islands the tops of the mountains looked like they were snow capped, until you get closer and realize those are buildings. Santorini was so beautiful. We wore our bathing suits under our clothes hoping to sit on the black sand beaches for a while, but we just didn't have enough time. We were able to wander around Oia city for quite a while and take it all in. The shops had beautiful jewelry better quality by far than what we had seen anywhere. They also had great art, pottery, olive oil soap and olives of course. We spent quite a bit of time shopping. There were also an abundance of dogs everywhere. Just lying on the streets and in the squares. I'm pretty sure that they all had owners, they just wandered around without leashes. We then loaded back onto the tour buses and headed up to the tallest peak of Santorini to take in the view of the island.

From there we headed over to another winery for a "snack" of some of the most traditional dishes. If that was a snack, I can't imagine their idea of lunch. They had a buffet table loaded with a paste of beans (kind of like refried but I think it was made of garbanzo beans) topped with olives and cut tomatoes, some very uniquely shaped tomatoes, olives, pastries filled with different cheeses, grilled pork, a variety of different cheese slices, cherries, and grilled pita slices topped with olive oil. It was soooo good! I am drooling as I type just thinking about it. We totally gorged ourselves. During our meal they brought out dancers who showed us their traditional dresses and dances. It was a lot of fun. From the winery we went over to another area of the island I think it was Thira where we had a chance to shop and explore some more. There were fine jewelry shops all over the place and some great cafe's we stopped for some ice cream (which was amazing) I had a caramel and pistachio. We found some jewelry, pottery, a painted glass scene of Oia, some olive oil soap, and a pumice stone to remember the island (they have large pumice deposits and a mine). Then we had to decide if we wanted to take a donkey, or a cable car down the cliffs to reach the sea port below. We opted for the cable car. We heard the donkeys were pretty entertaining, but with glass and pottery we didn't want to chance it. The cable car was very scenic, it is amazing that those cities are perched up on cliffs like they are the views are just unbelievable. We definitely need to make a special trip back to Greece someday. We would really like to see Athens on the mainland and the island of Crete at least.