Travelling to Santorini sounds like a very luxurious vacation, but there are actually practical and cost-saving ways to visit this island.  Appearing as an outlier in a lot ways, Greece is the cheapest Euro country we’ve been to and if you’re craving for a sunny vacation, this country has a tropical weather and beautiful islands to boast.

Santorini in a Nutshell

An island of white and blue domed houses – Santorini is a crescent-like island and is very famous for its small town Oia because of the pretty ‘cliff houses‘. Note that Santorini isn’t about white beaches (though Greece doesn’t lack islands with white beaches such as the well-known Zakynthos).  Nevertheless, the island is all about the beauty of white washed houses dramatically situated by the cliff, having the amazing sunset as its background.  Also, it has some red and black beaches which are surprisingly stunning.

Travel is relatively cheap (especially in groups) – Food, transportation and accommodation are cheaper in Greece as compared to other European countries, even for Santorini if you know where to look.  I remember we would dine out in group of 5, and one meal per person would cost about €5+.

 

 

How to Get to Santorini

It is quite expensive to go directly to Santorini so most of the travellers choose Athens as point of entry.  The latter isn’t a bad idea especially if you’re fond of history and architecture. It’s amazing to see very old historical landmarks such as Parthenon which was constructed in 447 BC. From Athens, you can reach Santorini by air or by sea.

Going to Santorini, we opted to take ferry via Blue Star Ferries, which only costs €30 (Special Economy, which is less than half of the flight cost). Piraeus is the port if you’re coming from Athens, which you can reach by bus from the airport.  We left around 5:30 PM and reached Santorini at past 1 in the morning.  The good thing was, even we arrived in the middle of the night, there are a lot of vans available that could take us to our accommodation.

On our way back to Athens, we decided to fly via RyanAir, for €75, which only took 50 minutes.

Where to Stay

We stayed at Utopia, a private studio apartment via AirBnB and luckily is just almost in front of Perissa beach and Tranquilo bar where we got discounts.  There is more to life than staying in Oia, especially if you’re cutting on costs and loving the beach.  Perissa is a very good alternative — it only cost us S$33 per person for a night.

 

Transportation

While planning for this trip, I’ve read that driving a car is recommended when visiting Santorini.  However, I surprised that public transportation is indeed convenient – you can easily take bus when going to Oia/Fira from Perissa.  There were also some tourists who opted to ride ATV though some are not too keen to use it as it may not be too safe to drive it on certain parts of Santorini.

Day 1

The first day was spent by beach bumming around Perissa area.  It’s just amazing how you can indulge on a very tropical atmosphere in Europe especially when our next leg (Sweden, where nothern lights was already visible during this month, September), is already quite cold.

Another good thing about staying at Perissa is that there are lots of travel agencies / tour operators that we had the chance to compare which ones are cheaper and offer better services.  In preparation for the second day, we just rented a van which could pick us at Perissa and drop us off at Red Beach (Akrotiri) and we requested to drive us  back to Perissa in the afternoon.

 

Day 2

We woke up early and headed to ancient Akrotiri where we hiked for a few minutes and finally reached the Red Beach.  We then waited for the boat that could take us around (ride costs around €2, if I’m not mistaken), and after a long wait, it did came with a lot of seemingly fun tourists on board.  The passengers alighted on the next stop while we wanted to return to Red Beach and so we had the boat all to ourselves.

After red beach bumming, we went back to Perissa for late lunch and to freshen up, then took the bus going to Oia.

When is the best time to see Oia?  Santorini sunset on September happens past 7pm so it’s good to be there 1-2 hours before that when it’s no longer too hot and just in time for you to find a good spot to see the sunset.  We decided to find a restaurant that will offer the best view and it was indeed quite relaxing to have dinner with the stunning sunset.

 

Day 3

Fira

Don’t think that it’s only Oia that offers a fantastic view of cliff houses and sunsets.  Fira, Santorini’s capital doesn’t just have scenic views, but also has nice shops, restaurants and even a beautiful cathedral named Cathedral Church Of Candlemas Of The Lord.  From Perissa, we conveniently took public bus going to Fira, which is relatively closer than Oia.

 

Back at Perissa, we scouted for an affordable day tour which includes a boat ride that goes to Nea Kemeni (volcano) and Oia.  The good thing was the tour we chose picked us at Perissa.

 

Day 4

The funny part was we were scared that the tour bus would leave us, I was very much in a hurry and completely forgot that the first activity for the day is to hike the volcano at Nea Kemeni.  While I love to trek, I don’t find it pleasing to do this right at noon when the scorching heat of the sun is almost unbearable and there are no greeneries around.  We had our lunch after that and took a dip at the Aegean Sea.  Feels a bit phenomenal to finally swim the European waters and though it seems very warm and tropical, the water was surprisingly cold.

The boat passed by Oia and because we couldn’t resist this charming town, we decided to alight and see it for the last time.  Little did we know that since we came from the sea, the way to get there is to take the donkey or take the endless stairs of the cliff that’s full of donkey shit.  We, unfortunately, chose the latter, haha!

 

 

***Santorini is the first leg of our 2015 Eurotrip, and my friends’ favorite part of Europe.  This is also one of our most spontaneous and lightly-planned travels 🙂

On a side note, in the Euro places we’ve been to, we have noticed that Greece seems to have the best looking / hottest guys (from all walks of life), Greek gods indeed, haha!