It was a rush to catch our connecting flight from Athens to Santorini and every single airport has different rules. Just when you think you have the process sussed they change it.

As we arrived by plane we didn’t have that dramatic entrance to Santorini that you get by boat. We checked in to our pension in Thira and then walked up the hill to the town proper and were greeted by the white washed pensions with the odd church painted the iconic blue. We quickly realised that Rhodes is the more authentic Greece and that Santorini was definitely a tourist destination, but it is the perfect time of year to visit as long as you don’t mind it being too cold to swim. It was still warm and sunny during the day and a little cooler at night. I hate to think what it is like in the height of the season with hordes of tourists and 37 degrees Celsius in the shade.

Fortunately for our poor budget there were lots of cheap gyro places to choose from and we saw a lovely sunset over the caldera.

Santorini caldera is a large, mostly submerged caldera (volcanic crater). Visible above water is the circular Santorini island group, consisting of Santorini (aka Thera), the main island, Therasia and Aspronisi at the periphery, and the Kameni islands at the centre. The cliffs of Thera are vertical sheer drops leading into the crystal-clear Aegean Sea which is 500m deep. The views are absolutely stunning with the gorgeous towns perched on the top of the massively high cliffs.

We walked down the caldera in Thera to the old port which was 580 steep, very wide steps and passed multiple long-suffering donkeys taking tourists up and down. We opted to go back up in the cable car as it would have been a real slog going back up.

The next day we took a local bus to Oia, a town further round the Caldera, famed for its sunsets and a photographer’s dream. The cliffs were so high and the road so narrow that for the first time ever l suffered from vertigo. Luckily it was a short trip.

We walked around the town taking way too many photos and parked up with some ouzo at a cafe to watch the sunset. A little disappointing but never the less you could not fault the location.

We decided to treat ourselves to some wine tasting and chose a famous Santorini winery, Santo Wines that produces 50% of the islands wine. We took the tour first and because it was only us we were able to ask loads of questions which made it really worthwhile to understand the Greek culture. The winery is a cooperative and we quickly discovered that Greece has only being producing good quality wine for the past twenty years or so. They mainly only produce white wine and Santorini alone has 35 indigenous grape varieties. The house wine that we had been opting for at restaurants was in fact wine that was literally produced in the house or by a cousin from down the road. That explained a lot!

It was pointed out to us where the grapes grew and instead of what we thought was scrub, is actually the vines grown in terraces. The vine is trained into circles and lies directly on the dusty volcanic soil. It doesn’t require watering and doesn’t suffer from frosts or pests.

After our tour it was time for some tasting and we got 12 different very large wines to try, which l must say were not that great. The most interesting one was their famous wine, Vinsanto which is a white wine but is a dark brown / red almost fortified wine that has a strong raisin taste. In the midday sun we only got through half of it while admiring the spectacular view and had to go and have a nap afterwards especially after having to run for the bus.

We visited a couple of museums, the pre-historic and archaeological museums which talked about Santorini’s history. The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: the Minoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred some 3,600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization. The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of metres deep and may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, 110 km to the south, through a gigantic tsunami. Another popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis. Unfortunately, the ruins which a likened to Pompeii were closed so we were unable to visit.

Now it’s back to Athens on Ryanair for a few days to see the sights.