Jamonlandia: Greece

Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Greece...to Santorini

When heading to an island in the Aegean I recommend taking the afternoon ferry...a chance to see the Pireaus Port in Athens, a lovely ride past soo many little whitehouse covered islands, and a chance to see the sun set and the moon rise. The fast ferry takes 5 hours from Athens to Santorini with stops in Paros, Naxos, and Ios, the slow ferry takes 9 hours, but leaves in the morning if you want to arrive earlier in the day.

Upon arriving to Santorini, you find yourself in the Caldera, the cliff side of the island carved out by the volcanic erruption that created the island hundereds of years ago. At 10:00 at night it looks like your being enveloped by black rock, but as you get in your taxi you start the ride up the cliff, on tiny winding roads lit only by the headlights and the breaklights of the car in front of you, and wind up at the top of a mountain with views to the sea on the other side of the mountian and the lights of the baloconies of Fira in your left. From here, we took a right and headed down the mountain into the lovely, relaxed beach village of Perivolos.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

volcanic wine in greece

The most important crop that grows in Santorini is grapes...and they don't quite look like the vines you're imagining. Instead they make little wreaths out of old vines, and wrap the new vines on these, so they grow close to the ground protected from the harsh winds of the sea. The hills are spotted with little grape vine wreaths. The best wine I tasted was white, slightly sweet, but mostly dry and quite nice. We bought a bottle from a winery that opened in the 1800's by a family whose name has 18 letters in English and about 22 in Greek and has an underground wine museum with mechanical manequins showing you how wine has been made through the ages. I learned a lot but the manequins underground were a little creepy. Definantly not where you want to be alone late at night.