Wine Tasting in Santorini

September 2014

I will admit that my expectations were high for our day in Santorini, When I imagined a Greek island vacation, it was always Santorini that came to mind. The bright white and blue buildings, sparkling blue ocean and sunset - could it possibly be as beautiful in person as it was in the photos I'd seen? The answer? A resounding yes!

We arrived in Santorini at 8am. The island of Santorini is the result of a volcanic eruption around 1640 B.C. that caused the middle of the island to sink, leaving only the high cliffs of the caldera. We anchored in the middle of the caldera and could see the villages of Fira and Oia high on the cliffs above the water - much higher than I'd imagined (pictures to come later). We took the tender to the shore and hopped in a tour bus from there. Our tender dropped us off on the south side of the caldera, obviously at sea level. Our first stop was Oia Village, all the way at the North End of the caldera, high on the cliffs. Our bus ride brought us past vineyards and scenic views as we climbed to the village.

It was probably around 10am when we arrived at Oia - very early in the morning by village standards. The stores were just starting to open and the streets were fairly empty, not bustling with other tour groups, which was great. I think we had about an hour and a half to wander on our own around Oia. I could definitely stayed there longer, but we made the most of our time there.

We started out by this pretty little church and made our way out towards the cliffs and the views.

Most of these pictures were taken the first time we turned off the main street. Yes, there are a lot of pictures, but I couldn't narrow it down to just a few favorites!

Amongst all of the blue and white, the few red doors really stood out:

From there, we hiked down to the tip of the island to a scenic overlook where some of the most famous pictures of Santorini have been taken. Many of those pictures were taken at sunset or at night, but it was beautiful in the daytime, too:

From Oia, it was time to being our wine tasting. By that time, it was almost noon, so a wine tasting is acceptable, right? :) So this is what a vineyard looks like in Santorini. To protect the vines from the high winds that blow around the cliffs, the vines grow close to the ground, wound around an almost a basket shape. Like nothing I'd ever seen before!

We stopped first at the Santo Winery. This was the biggest, most commercial of the wineries we saw, with the most striking views, for sure:

This was our tasting table:

Santorini is most famous for its very sweet, white wine called Vin Santo. We tried each wineries version - some more successful than others. Here, Tommy samples one of the red wines from Santo:

We headed to our favorite winery next. To get to this one, we wandered down winding streets in what seemed like a much more residential area of the island. I was unaware that Santorini was hit by a major earthquake in 1956. Much of the island has been rebuilt, but as we wandered down these streets, you could still see evidence from the quake:

We saw some of the most beautiful doors as we walked down this path. The pink bougainvillea were an especially beautiful contrast to the blue and white:

If you blinked, you would have missed this tiny sign directing us to the little winery:

They stored all of the wine in their wine cellar in wooden barrels:

Our tasting was out on this cute little patio. Not sure whether it was the ambiance, or the wine, but they had our favorite wines of the day here. We bought a bottle to bring back to my Dad.

The last winery we visited was the Koutsoyannopoulos Wine Museum. This was an interesting place. Upon entering the museum, you head down stairs into a sort of underground cave, where you learn about the history of wine making in Santorini told through an audio guide, demonstrated by still life and semi-mobile figurines. We got a picture of the outside of the museum, but none down in the caves - they were dark, and honestly, the figures were a little creepy!

The wine was good, though!

From there, our tour ended and the bus dropped us off in Fira, the other main village on Santorini. It was a cute village too, but much busier than Oia, and lined with restaurants and souvenir stores. We stopped at a restaurant to put a little food in our stomachs after all the wine. We had a beautiful view while we ate, and we must have seen 25 couples stop at one certain location. Usually, the woman would stop and pose, while the man took her picture. It got to be rather humorous, so of course, we had to do the same when we finished our lunch. I must admit, it is a pretty picture:

From there, there were two ways back to our boat, by cable car or by foot/donkey. Given that we'd had a few glasses of wine, we chose the cable car ;)

We took a little nap when we got back to the boat, so we were nice and refreshed for the on-deck barbecue dinner. Our waiter at Candles the night before had recommended arriving a little early and choosing one of the tables on the edge of the deck, closest to the island, so that's exactly what we did!

This is the group of chefs on the boat - the Head Chef, Budhi is the one on the far right:

As always, the food was delicious. I had to take a picture of the largest plate of paella I'd ever seen. The size of the man standing behind the pan gives you some perspective on just how big it was:

Some of the other yummies:

Our Candles waiter was right, we had the best seat in the house. The sun was shining bright when we sat down, and we got to watch as the sun set over the villages on the cliffs high above that we'd visited early in the day. It was really cool to watch the colors change as the light dimmed:

Here are a couple of views of our dinner ambiance:

That's me in the corner of the photo - I told you the seats were great!

Finally, the sun sets on yet another beautiful day:

Onwards to Mykonos!

Adventures in Bodrum

September 2014

We arrived in Bodrum bright and early at 8am. I had never really heard of Bodrum before this trip, but it is supposedly quite the popular seaside getaway town for the rich and famous in Turkey. One of the excursions we could choose was a trip to a fancy hotel to lounge by the beach or spend the day at the spa. Being the history lovers we are, though, Tommy and I chose the "Bodrum Castle with Expert Guide" tour.

The Castle of St. Peter sits on a small, rocky peninsula in the middle of the town's two harbors. The castle was built in 1402 by the Crusader Knights using the remains of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, which was destroyed by in earthquakes (more to come on that). The castle was later taken over in 1522 by Suleiman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Empire.

The castle now houses the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, which was the focus of our tour. The "expert guide" was definitely the coolest part of the trip. He was part of the original crew of underwater archaeologists who dove around Bodrum in beginning in the 1950's to uncover the ruins that the museum holds today. Our guide was the photographer who dove to take pictures of the ruins as they were uncovered - how cool is that?! Here he is showing us some of the amphoras that were found in the shipwrecks:

  

And a very large anchor:

The shipwrecks were the stars of this museum. This one dated back to the Bronze age. The discovery of obsidian on this ship that could be traced to a specific location and time completely changed the understanding of the history of seafaring that existed at the time - pushing the time of the earliest known seafarers back thousands of years.

The museum housed many of the treasures found on the boats. Number 6 in the second picture is especially valuable - unfortunately, I can't remember why :(

  

There's a story behind this picture that makes it especially interesting. Our guide told the story of diving down to photograph some of the ruins and treasures, using a vacuum to remove some of the sand and dirt from around the ruins when his vacuum stopped working because something was stuck in it. What was it? Just one of those gold coins now displayed at the top of the case. Really cool to have a guide who was so intimately involved in the excavation of the ruins - his excitement was palpable as explained history and told his story and it made it so much more interesting!

After we finished our tour of the castle and museum, we grabbed a bite to eat and wandered through town, up some winding streets, past homes, little grocery stores, and then, right in the middle of it all, the ruins of yet another one of the Wonders of the Ancient world. So crazy! The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was built in the 4th century BC as a tomb to hold the remains of Mausolus, a Governor in the Persian Empire. It was destroyed by a series of earthquakes in the 12th-15th century AD, and not much remains today except the foundation of the building and pieces of some of the columns, but you can imagine how impressive it must have been. As I said, the some materials from the ruins of the mausoleum were used in construction of the Castle of St. Peter. 

 

Past some more residential buildings, up a steep hill, and across a busy street lies the Theater of Halicarnassus. We didn't really know this existed, but could see it up at the top of the hill as we walked through the town, so we decided to hike up and check it out. Tommy and I were the only ones there and we weren't even sure it was open, but no one stopped us from walking up and checking it out, so we explored.

We walked up to the top of the first level of seating. Tommy may have walked a little higher, but the rocks looked a little unsteady, so this acrophobic decided to stick to the top of the first level!

 

 

The view from our perch - that's the castle on the peninsula at the left of the photo. We kept wondering how it was possible that cruise ships and tourists flock to Bodrum and yet somehow, we were the only ones who hiked up to the theater and were enjoying that amazing view - very cool!

We hiked back down and made our way back to the boat. This was our view of the boat in the harbor as we rode back on the tender:

Since the boat was anchored out in the water not right on shore, they opened up the back of the boat for some water sports. Some people went water skiing or sailing, but Tommy and I elected just to float on the rafts they were pulling behind the boat and enjoy the beautiful Aegean Sea:

 

 Before we left Bodrum, a traditional Turkish Belly Dancer came on board and danced for everyone:

Of course, she requested volunteers - now you can see why Tommy sat is in the back row behind everyone else!

 We went out on deck to watch the ship depart Bodrum at 7pm

It was fairly calm, so they were able to unfurl the sails more than usual:

 

At the beginning of the trip, we signed up for one night to eat at Candles, the on-deck "restaurant" that was set up each night. We picked a great night - the sun was setting and we were just pulling out of Bodrum catching our last glimpses of the Turkish coastline as we made or way to the Greek Isles. Beautiful! The crew put on a fun show for everyone after dinner and we headed back to our room after a packed day.

 Next up, Santorini and yes, it really is as beautiful as the photos you see!