Santorini

View from Oia, Santorini

From the moment I saw Oia in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movie, I thought it must be one of the most beautiful places on Earth. 

A few years ago, I was so fortunate to travel around Greece with a group from my university. That trip was early-on in my travels. I was still very focused on my pre-living-in-Europe life goals, which I won't revisit. But let's just say I was very focused on living a perfect, pragmatic life, which even then I knew was probably not going to be very fun. This trip was consequential in changing that. I opened my heart to new experiences, and I got over some of the shyness that had held me back from meeting new people in the past. 

Not only were my heart and mind opened, but my stomach was too. Yogurt with honey for breakfast, gyros (without meat, so essentially french fries and tzatziki in pita bread, but oh, so good), and fire-roasted chestnuts in the village where our amazing tour guide was from. 

So when my friend recently asked me to join her in Santorini, I didn't hesitate. We had been separately traveling around for a few weeks and we were both ready for a break. We stayed in the cutest b & b with a lovely couple who ran the place with their very cute dog. We even had hammocks on our balcony. The best part though? It was a short walk to the black sand beach (in Perissa). We went right before the beginning of tourist season, so we never had any competition for beach chairs, and best of all? We had peace and quiet. For three days we went to the beach (to the same beach club even - why complicate things?) and just totally relaxed. My friend caught some rays while I chased the shade as soon as sunlight began to peak through the umbrella.  On the third day we were so relaxed that we decided it was necessary that for at least one day of our vacation, we should venture out to the rest of the island. 

So off we went. One great thing about Santorini is that you can pretty much stay on any corner of the island and easily reach the other parts. It's well suited to people who like adventure and activities and also to those who prefer to lounge around. We made a pit stop in Thira, and while there was only one road that connected Thira and Oia at that time, somehow we missed it and drove for a very long time down a road that was a dead end. Finally we made it Oia, the place I had first wanted to visit over ten years before. And how beautiful it was. We had a lovely afternoon watching the painted town turn from a reflective white at noontime to a golden embrace of the sunset, always against the backdrop of the all-consuming blue that surrounds the island. Our lunch came with the most magnificent view that we were both video calling our families to show them. 

After our big day out, my friend and I spent our last day at the beach until dusk. I didn't know if it would be in my fate to return to Greece after that first visit five years before, but I had hoped it would be. The woman who went to Santorini is very different from the girl who arrived in Athens five years before. Greece opened my heart, and I wanted to go back and tell her thank you. 

love,

greer