Santorini

We had one final Achilleas breakfast before leaving Athens for Santorini. It was Sunday morning. This morning we retraced our steps from exactly one week previous. We carried out luggage out of the hotel and down the narrow little street to Syntagma Square, then across the square and down the stairs to the metro. Then we rode the metro the airport and flew Olympic airways to the island.

We could see the whole island from the air as we landed. The island is shaped like giant letter “C”, and is so shaped because it is part of the cone of an extinct volcano. It is the eruption of this volcano that likely destroyed the Minoan civilization of Crete, which may have given rise to the legend of Atlantis.

We had arranged to be picked up at the airport and the driver from the Astra Apartments was waiting for us. We had to wait for a bit for another American couple who was staying at the Astra and had just flown in from Rome. The airline had lost their luggage. They had just spent a week in Italy and the airline had lost their luggage on the way to Italy from the US as well. We commiserated and thanked our lucky stars that to date our luggage had stayed with us. The driver drove us across the island and dropped us at the Imerovigli “town square” which looked suspiciously like a parking lot. There were some stairs descending from one edge of the parking lot. The driver told us to go “down and to the left.” “Down” took us over the edge of the caldera where a plethora of white stuccoed building clung to the side of the cliff. “To the left” took us onto the walking path that traverses the caldera from Fira, near the center of the “C” to Ia on one of the tips. A sign on the path announced the Astra. We descended some more steps that led to a little plaza that ran the length of the Astra Apartments. All of the apartments either entered directly onto this plaza or entered onto stairs that went down to the plaza. The office was located next to the stairs and at the opposite end of the plaza were a pool and an outdoor bar. The edge of the plaza opposite the apartments dropped down to the next level where there was another small hotel. Below that level was nothing but hundreds of feet of precipitous cliff and then the sea. We checked in at the office and then were escorted to our apartment, which was located near the pool and had its own little private patio on the plaza and faced west toward the caldera. The apartment had a small kitchen/living area, a bedroom, and a bathroom that was nearly as big as our Athens hotel room. The shower was so commodious that not only could you bend over, but you could run laps.

Projecting into the caldera from the edge, and directly in front of our hotel was a small promontory of land called Skaros. There were ruins of a castle at the peak of Skaros. From the Middle Ages until the mid-1800’s this castle and its associated buildings on Skaros housed the island’s administrative offices. It eventually fell into disuse and time, combined with several earthquakes, has reduced it to ruins. It is difficult to tell even when you are among the ruins that an elaborate complex of buildings once existed here.

After checking in, resting, and enjoying the ambience of the hotel for awhile, we walked a half-mile or so down the walking path to a little seafood restaurant hugging the side of the caldera with a great view of Skaros. The restaurant was appropriately called Skaros. Kathy and I split a Greek salad and I had a Mythos and some calamari along with tzatziki for dipping. The calamari was huge and was fried with a coating of fava. “Fava” is not fava beans but rather is a local legume that resembles a small yellow pea. Each pea is about the size of a grain of barley. The tzatziki was pungent with garlic and the whole meal was wonderful in every way.

Unfortunately, since it was a 3 PM meal, I was not a bit hungry when we went out for dinner at 8 PM. We had followed our 3 PM lunch with more wandering on the hiking path and then several hours of watching the sunset from our balcony.

Dinner was at the world-famous Selene, located on several terraces overlooking the caldera in Fira, and presided over by the world-famous Selene, herself. The setting was beautiful and the food was imaginative and thoughtfully prepared. Since I was still bloated from my hearty late lunch, I tried to pick light items off the menu. I had a dry Santorini white wine, and Selene’s version of a Greek salad, which was attractively presented with crunchy croutons, a local variety of cherry tomato, wild Santorini capers and grated (gasp!) feta. I followed the salad with a bowl of fish ball soup with a very mild fish stock broth. I finished with a cantaloupe sorbet served in a slice of cantaloupe. What was a memorable occasion unfortunately became all the more memorable due to the acute gastrointestinal distress that followed--not in any way due to the food, but more than likely due to the quantity consumed. I have witnessed cows suffering bloat from overeating fresh green grass on a spring day, and that's the way I felt. The day ended with my chugging some Kaopectate and going to bed.