Day 14: Exploring Santorini, Fira, Museums, and Oia

I had a bit of a lay-in this morning and didn’t get to breakfast until about 9 am. The plan for today was a fairly relaxed morning and afternoon at the pool and off to Oia early evening to catch the sunset and have dinner.

Breakfast was much the same as yesterday — still disappointing — but I ate enough to get to lunchtime. I spent the early morning at the pool near my room, reading, listening to music and occasionally swimming when the sun got too hot.

At about 11 am, I showered, dressed and walked into Fira to visit some museums and then get lunch. I started at the Museum of Prehistoric Thira, which houses an impressive collection of finds excavated from Akrotiri. The exhibits are quite impressive considering how old they are, dating as far back as the 17th century BC:

A selection of the exhibits from the Museum of Prehistoric Thira. The golden Ibex is particularly impressive.

I then moved on to the Archaeological Museum of Thira, a bit further north of the town. It’s smaller than the first place and perhaps not quite as impressive, but it still has a good collection of artefacts and only costs a few Euros to enter.

Finally, I visited the Megaro Gyzi Museum, previously a private house donated to the island. It houses some interesting collections of photos and documents from before and after the big 1956 earthquake, along with maps, engravings and paintings from as far back as the 15th century.

After the museums, I decided to walk around the town to explore and take photos as it’s a very picturesque place!

The white-painted, blue-domed buildings typify the island. View of Fira, looking south from the northern end of town. It’s amazing how many hotels they’ve managed to cling to the side of Caldera! My arty shot of Nea Kameni was taken from just outside my hotel on the south side of Fira.

Having satisfied my tourist cravings, I went back to Nick’s Grill for lunch and had another excellent Gyros, then back to the hotel again to sunbathe by the pool.

At about 5 pm, I returned to my room to shower and get ready to go to Oia. I got on the 6:30 pm bus, which wasn’t quite as packed as I had expected (though it filled up along the way). The journey to Oia takes a little while as the bus goes right through Fira town and then to the north of the island via the eastern coastal road, but we arrived about 7:15 pm with plenty of time to catch the sunset. Even at this time, it was very busy, and many of the good sunset spots already had crowds of people hanging around, so I decided to walk along the paths, taking photos as I went and not bothering to stop for the sunset. I still have some nice photos:

To escape the crowds, I walked back towards the bus station to look for a restaurant that wasn’t too busy. As the sun hadn’t quite set, most places weren’t that busy, but many good tables would have been reserved. I was very lucky to get a rooftop terrace table at Oia Gefsis – a restaurant I chose completely at random – and had probably the best meal of my entire trip: garlic pita bread with Feta cheese to start, followed by creamy chicken tagliatelle with roasted peppers. It was AMAZING! The sunset view added to the experience and made for one of the most enjoyable evenings of the holiday.

My stomach fully satisfied, I walked back to the bus stop at around 9:15, and although it was very busy, they had lots of buses returning to Fira, so I got onto the second one and was back at the hotel by 10:30, feeling fantastic and ready for a good night’s sleep!