A Short Greek Getaway

There is something special about being on an island.

Not a big island, like Ireland, Britain or Sicily, but a small island where you can see water all around you and feel the smallness of it against the vastness of the ocean or sea. Sao Miguel was special in that way. Guam was special in that way (and in many other ways).

Small coastal islands like Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts, don’t exude the same feeling. You know you are only a short ferry ride from the mainland, so you don’t get that same sensation of an oasis in the midst of watery vastness.

Islands and mountains are my favorite places to get away, to experience some degree of soothing, cleansing isolation. To be honest, I have always found more isolation, more peace, and more spiritual connection in the high country. But islands have something that mountains lack: the power of the sea.

In lieu of that powerful spiritual experience of being in a high mountain valley, a small island surrounded by a sea or ocean will do just fine.

Santorini

As I started this post, I was on a short vacation on the Greek island of Santorini (I finished it back home in Kharkiv). Santorini is part of a vast archipelago stretching across the Aegean Sea from mainland Greece to Turkey. The island is sort of unique in that it was the site of a devastating volcanic eruption somewhere around 1660 BC that sent much of the original island into the sea. There are some legends that claim the lost city of Atlantis was on Santorini and was destroyed in the eruption.

Now the main island is sort of curved around the caldera of the sunken portion, with a still-active volcanic portion in the center of the caldera and another piece located just northwest of the “volcano island.” There was another significant earthquake there in 1956, so people there have to a bit “on their toes” with regard to Mother Nature.

Santorini is one of the more developed islands in the archipelago, which makes it a real tourist trap from April to October, and especially during the summer. But I arrived in early March when the temperatures are pleasant, if not particularly warm, and there are very few tourists.

Just the way I like it: not hot, and not a lot of people. I was able to enjoy my time in T-shirts and shorts and without a lot of people invading my calm space.

So this post is about my four days on Santorini. I honestly don’t know where this post will go; it might be something of a travelogue, like my posts about my 2016 Portugal trip, or it might wander off into something else entirely. The point is to get writing again, something that I let slide very badly in 2018.

A Few Rants

I’ll get a couple of negative points off my chest first and be done with them.

Are there any more obnoxious and annoying tourists today than the Chinese? You’re in some relatively quiet, natural place and then you hear someone yakking loudly into a phone. You turn around and, sure enough, he is Chinese.

On my first full day, I wanted to take a photo of a small monastery building that was framed by red rock behind it. It would have been a perfect picture if some Chinese tourists hadn’t suddenly pulled up and parked their car in front the building, right in the center of my photo. Everyone else had parked in another area across from the building. They got out of the car, looked right at me holding my camera, then got their stuff from the car and walked away, leaving the car right there to ruin the shot.

Yes, there are words for such people, but this is a family blog.

The owner of the place I stayed at overnight near the Athens airport before I want to Santorini told me that of all the guests he has had to deal with over the years from almost every country imaginable, the Chinese have been the most arrogant and condescending. “They expect you to carry their bags for them, like a servant,” he told me.

I wasn’t surprised.

Windrose Airlines sucks. That about says it all.

Why is it that the so-called “smart cars,” the smallest cars on the road, can’t seem to stay on their own side of the street? It’s weird that the cars I met coming the other way that were most likely to be taking up part of my lane were these mini-midgetmobiles.

Greeks smoke a lot, and they often do it in restaurants and cafes. Believe it or not, Ukraine is actually ahead of the curve on limiting smoking in public buildings by comparison. I really hate cigarette smoke!

The Offseason

Touring a place like Santorini in the offseason is really a treat – unless you actually like crowds, traffic and long waits. I was able to enjoy driving on the island, especially in the south, because the traffic was light to nonexistent. But I did experience a bit of traffic in and around the main towns of Fira and Oia, so I can imagine what it must be like in the high season when this popular resort destination is choked with throngs of visitors.

At the tourist spots, there were few tourists and sometimes none at all. There were those occasional Chinese, however. I saw many huge tour buses parked in a few places on the island, but I only encountered a couple of them on the road. I can imagine what it must be like trying to drive around the island in the high season with exponentially more rental cars and lots of those huge buses on the narrow roads. No thank you!

Sure, it’s not so warm, and swimming was out of the question, but that’s fine for me. I prefer it to be a bit warm but not hot; 15-18 degrees Celsius in the daytime is perfect.

I had lunch one day in a tavern near the famous Red Beach, and for most of that time, I was the only customer. There was a family there when I arrived (from Virginia), and we chatted just a bit. But otherwise, I had the place to myself. Similarly, in the restaurant at the hotel I stayed at, I was the only customer for breakfast or dinner each day.

In the offseason, you get a better sense of how people really live. Locals are more open, and because they have fewer guests to deal with, they can take a little more time with you. And they do. I had some really interesting chats with the owners of the place I was staying at, Villa Michalis, and a few other places I stopped at.

At one little beachside café, the host asked me where I was from, and when I told him I had come from Ukraine, he started speaking Russian. He wanted to practice, and it was sort of funny to have two people trying to communicate in quite poor Russian. But at least for me it was enjoyable to speak Russian with someone who made my level seemed pretty good by comparison.

Life on Santonini in the offseason seems devoted largely to repairing and freshening up the facilities in preparation for the tourist season. In many places I saw workers renovating verandas and other structures that will be filled with tourists in just a few short months. And not all of the restaurants and cafes were even open. There was one Greek restaurant that I had read about and was looking forward to trying, a place called “Salt and Pepper” in Fira, but it was closed until April.

A popular, developed island like Santorini is never going to give you that feeling of isolation and quiet, but at least in the offseason you can find some quiet spots to get away and find some peace. I suspect this simply is not true in the high season.

The Sun Comes Up – The Sun Goes Down

Only on an island can you catch the sunrise and sunset over the sea on the same day. Of the two, the sunrise might be more inspiring You have to make the effort to get up early if you want to catch it, and it’s the birth of a new day, the beginning of your day, rather than the end.

But I like them both.

Very often in Colorado in the summer, we get gorgeous bursts of color as the sun drops down behind the mountain peaks, and those are some of the most beautiful sunsets I can recall. But when the sun sets into the sea or ocean, and there is just the right combination of clear sky with just a few clouds toward the horizon, it is magnificent.

I managed to catch a stunning sunset on my first evening. It was from a lighthouse on the southwest corner of the island. The next morning was completely cloudy, so I didn’t bother getting up for the sunrise, but I did go to a nearby beach on the southeast side for the next morning’s sunrise. It was a perfect sunrise, but my pictures came out much less than perfect for some reason. I was very disappointed. But I rectified that a few days later by catching a beautiful sunrise from my hotel balcony in the mainland port of Rafina.

Anata-wa Nihon-jin Desu Ka?

I mentioned earlier about the rather abrasive Chinese tourists. In contrast, however, I was delighted on a couple of occasions to run into some Japanese visitors. Of course, I lived in Japan for six years, so I have a great appreciation for the Japanese people, and I consider the Japanese language to be one of the world’s more beautiful languages – much more so than Chinese.

On my last full day on Santorini, I decided to have lunch in a little pizzeria, and I chose a table by a window with a nice view of the caldera. Shortly after I sat down, two girls came in and sat behind me. They seemed polite and were talking quietly with each other. But after a few minutes, I realized they were speaking Japanese.

After a while, I decided to ask them – in Japanese – if they were from Japan. They were quite surprised – and pleased – to hear someone speak to them in their own language, and we had a brief conversation (in English, of course, because my Japanese is far worse even than my Russian). Then I left them to enjoy their lunch together, but made a point to say goodbye and wish them well in Japanese when I left.

To add to the Japan-related coincidences, the person sitting next to me on my return flight from Santorini to Athens was a young guy from Japan. We had a very nice conversation during the short flight (in English).

The Joy of Driving

One of the things I enjoyed most about my time on the island was driving around. I rented a small Peugeot to get around and enjoyed it a lot. It was a very simple car without all the bells and whistles that my rentals in Portugal or the UK had, but on a tiny island where no place is more than a 40-minute drive from anyplace else, you don’t need a GPS or advanced audio system.

Driving is one ofthe greatest joys of my life, but in Ukraine, I don’t drive at all. So for the past 10 years or so, the only chances to drive have been when I’ve been on vacation, and during my UK vacation in July I left most of the driving to my daughter. So it was a real pleasure to be behind the wheel, especially in a place where there was almost no traffic and no stress.

Not Really My Kind of Place

I enjoyed my four short days on Santorini, but it’s not a place I would pine to return to. It’s an arid island, as are most of the islands in the Aegean, I guess, which just makes it less attractive. And it’s quite developed, meaning there are not so many places where you can just get away from people and enjoy a natural environment. I managed to find a few spots, but during the high season, I imagine that even these would have tourists swarming about.

My favorite island getaway, thus far, remains Sao Miguel. It’s one place I might like to return to someday, and it would be interesting to check out some of the smaller islands in the Azores. Although Sao Miguel does get a fair amount of tourists in the high season, you can still find plenty of lush, beautiful places. I imagine that the other islands would also be very green, but with fewer people. Santorini, on the other hand, seems like the kind of place that is never really lush or green.

Still, Santorini is a nice place, and I really liked the people. For those who like warm water, sunny beaches, good food, and some ancient history, it can be a great destination – as long as you don’t mind sharing with a few thousand other tourists in the high season.

But I won’t be going back. It’s time to start thinking about a totally different summer vacation.

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