Greece Trip Report, Day 12: Spectacular Santorini, Day 3: Akrotiri, Light house

Day 12, Nov 20, 2018, Tuesday:

After enjoying the caldera villages of Oia, Fira, Firastefani and Imerovigli for the past 2 days, we decided to drive to the other parts of the island.

The whole island is only 90 sq km. The central, rectangular lagoon is just 12 km by 7 km (7.5mi by 4.3 mi), and is surrounded by 300 m (980 ft) high, steep cliffs on three sides. So driving end to end is pretty fast!

Thera/Thira is the official name of the island and its main city(Fira), but the colloquial name Santorini is still in popular use.  The name Santorini is a contraction for  Santa Irini (Saint Irene).

This is a good map of the island... our places of interest visited circled in blue

We drove south toward Akrotiri. Saw some beaches on the way including the Red Beach, stopped at a church.

 Heard and saw these church bells ringing ... lovely

 There are danger signs as there have been rockfalls triggered by hikers killing them as well as people on the Red Beach

AKROTIRI Archaelogical site:

Then went to the archaelogical ruins. 

Southern tip of a large town has been uncovered, it has revealed complexes of multi-level buildings, streets, and squares with remains of walls standing as high as eight meters, all entombed in the solidified ash of the famous eruption of probably around 1500 BC .

Many of the houses in Akrotiri are major structures, some of them three stories high. In many houses stone staircases are still intact, and they contain huge ceramic storage jars (pithoi), mills, and pottery. 

Noted archaeological remains found in Akrotiri are wall paintings or frescoes, which have kept their original color well, as they were preserved under volcanic ash. 

The town also had a highly developed drainage system and, judging from the fine artwork, its citizens were clearly sophisticated and relatively wealthy people.

Pipes with running water and water closets found at Akrotiri are the oldest such utilities discovered. The pipes run in twin systems, indicating that Therans used both hot and cold water supplies; the origin of the hot water probably was geothermic, given the volcano's proximity. 

The dual pipe system, the advanced architecture, and the apparent layout of the Akrotiri find resemble Plato's description of the legendary lost city of Atlantis, 

We went round, then got out, drove to the Akrotiri beach nearby. 

Then we aimlessly drove around stopping at any pretty sight. Not too many... it was all barren or residential. 

Our quest for nice churches did get rewarded a few times.

 We drove toward the Light house.

LIGHT HOUSE:

Good views. 

Then we drove into Perissa, got a bottle of drinking water at the Supermarket. Our B&B had given a bottle of water on the day we checked in. On Sunday evening when we tried to buy water after our sight seeing the supermarket was closed at 4.30... closes at 3 PM on Sundays. It had been a minor irritant why B&B did not leave a bottle daily. We were thankful we had not rented a place in Perissa... it had sea views but it would have been too far off. Our choice had more charm and had been very easy for our sight seeing

In the tight switchbacks from the Light house, a girl riding an ATV pillion lost her helmet and the helmet came flying/rolling toward our car... thankfully it did not hit the car. The  ATV guys... 2 ATVs ... looked shaken

 We drove toward the villages of Megalochori and Pyrgos which are touted to be pretty. We did not hit any pretty sight. The recommendation is to park outside the villages and walk around... we did a slow drive inside … no dice!

 We were back in our territory and tried to visit the Folklore museum... it was closed... no access to the pretty church on the premises

AMOUDI BAY:

We drove toward Amoudi Bay. The previous day we had stopped short of climbing down to the Bay. The Bay was a pretty sight. We sat around for a few minutes. 

It was cloudy and windy. We had earlier thought of watching the sunset from the Bay or the light house. All ruled out as there was no scope of seeing the sun set. It started drizzling and we went back to our home base.

Our flight back to Athens was at 8 am the next day. We had to pay extra for early drop off as it was outside regular office hours. Car rental guy told us we can meet him at 7 am at the airport. We had read horror stories about the delays at Santorini airport, so did not want to rush through security. We had to drop bags too. We said we'll meet him at the arrival bay at 6 am.

Filled up fuel half full as we had received. Did a recce driving to the airport so that there will be no confusion in the early morning dark. With all the arrangements done, we packed and slept off early.

We could have included a catamaran cruise for this day... but the timings are from 11 to 4 and we did not fancy their schedule of an hour at the volcano island Therasia. We would have loved a view of the caldera cliffs from water but there was no shorter cruise available. So we had decided on the drive through the island.

This day had been pretty mediocre for us... as I had originally planned 2 days would have been just right. But no major regrets.

VIDEO LINK:

Our Santorini Day 3 video is here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/uFLfDThwv4CVbZYf8 

Report of our Athens visit starts here:
https://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2018/12/greece-trip-report-day-13-athens.html