Heaven on earth. That is how to describe Santorini.
My mom and I arrived Thursday night after our connection in Athens. We flew for 35 minutes on a small “puddle jumper” plane. While there are many small villages in Santorini, my mom and I stayed in Oia, the most popular.
Once we were checked in, we were giddy with excitement to see our room. It was amongst the other clean, white buildings on the bluff of the southern Aegean sea. We ordered food and some wine and started off the vacation!
Friday morning, we had breakfast at the hotel that overlooked the sea. Then, we had a guided hike through some of the other smaller villages of Santorini. This granted us a chance to see another side of the island and a closer look at the architecture.
The primary materials of the buildings are clay, cement, volcanic dust, black igneous rock, red rock, and pumice stone. This is credited to the volcanic caldera located in Santorini. Many of these buildings also stand out due to their sea-blue roofs and arched doorways.
Friday was a very windy day, so we decided that shopping on the main street would be best after our hike/tour. We stopped at many local shops and browsed around the jewelry, linen clothes, and paintings.
Our little resort house was right in the middle of the street. Therefore, it made shopping and walking around very accessible. We walked up and down the main street, which offered a view of the sea at any given point. The street was lined with small, white buildings.
We ordered some authentic Greek salads and had a little picnic in our own place. The sun ended up coming out in just enough time to set, so we walked over to the end of the island to get the best view.
Truthfully, I don’t know how any photographer is successful on this island. Every photo taken is good enough to be on a postcard. No extra filters, extensive angles, or poses. Just simple beauty. (I’m sure my mom strongly disagrees with this opinion after I forced her to take 100 photos of me.)
For dinner, we had various seafood and ate it with a view of the Aegean Sea. We then went back to the hotel, drank wine, and watched some Netflix before bed.
Saturday was much more beautiful than it was forecasted to be. The beginning hours came with some wind and clouds, but the wind had died down as the sun came out by the afternoon! So, again, we decided to stroll through the main street. We grabbed a pink Sangria drink to accompany us. This drink naturally turned into another.
After a couple of drinks and a few hundred pictures, we decided to lay out in the sun for a few hours. I finished my book “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover, and my mom got some work done. Who says you can’t be productive on vacation?
As the evening approached, I had a brief 30-minute massage. This relieved me from all the headaches I had gotten from sleeping on an airplane during these past months.
We had a nice dinner at the restaurant where we had our sangrias earlier in the day and toasted to a quick, but successful, weekend in one of the most beautiful places in the world!
While this was a brief trip, we decided it would be best to not fill it with activities but rather leave enough time to enjoy the view. I think that this goes to show the true beauty of Greece. Instead of doing, we just enjoyed. We let ourselves be surrounded by beauty, which was enough for us.
Greece is simple and natural with flawless beauty… and a language that is impossible to understand.
Santorini has been on my bucket list for as long as I knew about the place, and I am so blessed to check it off, especially with my momma!
sent with emphasis 