If you had asked me last year to name the top ten Mediterranean places I would like to go on holiday Santorini certainly would not have been among them, in fact, it wouldn’t even be on a top 20 list. I had never even heard of the place until Alex, a friend of mine, told me how beautiful and tranquil it was. I loved the blue domes and white buildings I saw from a Google image search and thought to myself, it would be a great honeymoon destination, a valid thought for one who lived where the sun scarcely shone. However upon visiting the Greek island things weren’t what I expected.

Our journey to Perissa-Perivolos was as I expected, small European Mediterranean airport, slightly rural looking environment and stoic taxi drivers who barely spoke any English. What wasn’t expected was the scenery, which got more rural the closer we got to our destination. Lots of dilapidated abandoned homes, stray dogs, tall dried grass, goats, and horses, this wasn’t at all what I saw on my Google image search. Our hotel was an oasis compared to its surrounding with what looked like newly painted white and grey walls, a turquoise pool at the back, and lush green vegetation. Apart from the fact, we were placed in a less than satisfactory room on our first night we were generally happy with the Fenix Collection. The room had a pool view, breakfast was good, and Manos–one of the staff members, was incredibly helpful. One advantage to staying in Perissa was it was about ten minutes away from the beach, the first beach I had ever seen with black sand. We regularly visited that part of Santorini in the evenings at the end of our day to relax with a meal by the sea which made us feel relaxed as we heard the waves as they crashed onto the shore. That section of Perissa came alive particularly at night with a pedestrian-only road full of well-lit Greek and Mediterranean restaurants although–we didn’t truly enjoy Santorini until we ventured out of Perissa, with a quad bike.

Yep, you read the last sentence of the previous paragraph correctly, a quad bike, a very unusual mode of transport we noticed a lot of people using when we got on the island. To be honest, it’s not something we thought we’d end up using, but Manos, our hotel concierge was incredibly persuasive and told us it’s the best way to see the island. So with the flash of a three-year-old driving license and 35€ later we were the proud owner of a 150CC quad bike, well, just for two days. I wouldn’t say I’m a terrible driver–I hadn’t driven in a while since I passed my test so I was a bit nervous at first driving on the narrow Greek roads. I practiced in a dusty alleyway for about 5 minutes with a training bike before I was given the more powerful one and I quickly got the hang of it.

Our first destination was Thira/Fira which was honestly the first sight of beauty we saw on the island after being there for two days. The place was busy, full of tourists, locals, and shops with surprisingly cheap goods. We walked around the area with no particular agenda or place to visit and found a spot to eat our packed lunch right on the side below a bus stop. It was quiet, and although the temperature was north of 25 degrees, the wind where we were was cool. Upon finishing we continued walking towards a crowd until we saw a large, white church in the distance, and upon reaching the sea became more visible, hidden a row of white bars and swimming pools on the cliff. It was incredible, I had never seen anything like it. Cramped and tight, taking up all the possible space on the cliff with a haphazard but unique layout. The view was fantastic, we spoke about how much it must have cost to book a room at one of these places.

The heat was unbearable and we had somehow walked into a place full of narrow two-person wide streets which somehow with shops on them. Shops that sold sunglasses, tote bags, trendy clothes that you could add customise the designs of, shops that sold greek ornaments and expensive jewellery. We looked into a few of them and made a pit stop at an ice cream place. Once finished we walked up to another church for a few minutes before we decided we’d had enough, walked back to our quad, and drove to our next destination, Imerovigli.

Looking at beautiful pictures of Santorini you’d never think the paths and walkways were so narrow, the doors and gates were so low. Imerovigli was definitely one of those places where it all came to light. Much quieter than Fira with much fewer tourists, shops and congestion this was the place where many of the popular hotels and villas were, more or less stacked above of each other with only narrow roads and low roofs separating them. The views here were also very impressive and this is the place where I got most of my amazing shots, but once that was done, we found nothing else interesting to explore. So we set off back on the quad and traveled back to Perissa.

One place we were definitely told to visit was s place called Akrotiri. This place didn’t have impressive views, hotels or tourists shops, but the remains of an advanced civilisation native to Santorini. Sadly, the museum wasn’t open when we got there and after walking around for a few minutes we discovered there wasn’t much more to this place so we hopped back onto the quad and drove around. We came across a few modern buildings which were perfect for photos because of the Mediterranean surroundings. To end the evening, we stopped by at a place that claimed to have the best view of the sunset in Santorini, I was skeptical at first since I was told Oia was the best place for that, but after seeing a number of seats that were reserved my skepticism subsided somewhat. We were there too early for the sunset so we ordered some drinks and a pizza. As the evening came closer the place started to fill up, soon there was a crowd around us, we had stumbled on a gem, unfortunately, I’m unable to remember its name, therefore, have no way of recommending it, but they weren’t wrong. The views of the sunset here were wonderful, and the clear sky definitely helped with how good the images I took looked.

On our penultimate day on the Greek island in of Santorini, we exchanged our quad bike for a sailboat and spent the day at sea. Regrettably, we didn’t plan the trip very well and although we had heard about the cruise the previous morning, we only decided to go on it a few minutes before we were allowed to. Manos was shocked once we told him and quickly filled in forms, called the cruise company, and wrote out our tickets once they confirmed our places. We jogged to the coach stop (which the locals called the Big Coop) and hopped onto the coach. In no time we were on the coast surrounded by masses of tourists all getting on their relevant boats and ships, ours was the King Thiras and our tour guide, Nadia, was a multilingual, energetic, brunette with weathered skin and a slightly crooked nose. She wore a long autumn brown dress, golden sandals, and a straw hat for when the sun hit her face. We all sat around in various places on the boat before we were given instructions in four different languages, English, French, Spanish, and German. Once all instructions were understood, we set off to the Volcano.

The trip took longer than we thought which soon made us realise our first error due to lack of preparation we didn’t pack any food. The island views and sea breeze could only mask the fact that we were hungry for so long and not only did we not bring anything to satisfy this urge, we didn’t bring any cash with us to purchase food on the boat, living in London lead us to believe cards were accepted pretty much everywhere, apparently not. The sight of paninis, snacks, and drinks people were purchasing around us made our stomachs rumble but the thought of us stopping at a place with food carried us through. We arrived at the Volcano but couldn’t actually walk on it because surprise surprise, we needed to pay money to do that and, they didn’t take cards, so we sat on the boat until the others were back. Luckily we weren’t alone and had an unusually well-dressed English group to keep us company. One dressed in red, another brown and the third, more of a tan colour, I’m not entirely sure what they were expecting but their attire definitely didn’t fit in with the heat and the amount of exploring that was expected to take place on our trip. Once everyone returned we set off again to the hot springs of Santorini. This was the least impressive part, not because I couldn’t swim and therefore had to watch others dive out of the ship, but because they didn’t look that particularly impressive. The springs were outdoors not in a cave or an enclosed space, they didn’t look vastly different from the majority of the sea, and they didn’t have water shooting out of them, it didn’t look particularly warm either. An experience nevertheless I guess, it was good we only spent 20 minutes there or I’m certain people would have questioned if our time was being well spent. Our next destination was a rural part of the island that I’ve also forgotten the name of, luckily this place had a few restaurants that took cash cards.

Sitting near the sea and waiting for a steak and chips was a good feeling. We could see small fish swimming by the pebbles on the shore and people in knee deep water splashing around and snorkeling, it was busy, but calm at the same time. After our lunch and ice creams, we walked around the area and I noticed an incredibly high vertical winding path, the urge to see what was on the top there ignited my curiosity, Hannah, on the other hand, wasn’t too fussed so–I decided to brave it solo. The first few steps were not too difficult at first, but the higher it got, the more obstacles came in my path. For starters it got much hotter, sweat was dripping from my face like I just had a shower, there were donkey feces all over the floor which I had to weave in and out of in my flip-flops. The ground became more rocky and uneven and worst of all, people who I assumed were less fit than I was were walking past me effortlessly. Eventually, I got to the top and took some time to catch my breath, then did some exploring with camera in hand.

It was quiet and very rural, there were a lot of rocks around the place, abandoned old Mediterranean buildings with rusty metal and paint peeling off the wood. There must have been about three or four stray cats which was not an unusual sight considering the number of stray animals we say in Perissa, I spotted some old ladies having a conversation in their front garden and a large yellow building with an ATM, which was pretty weird considering there were no other shops up here apart from that one. Exploring done, I went back down to the ground level, reunited with my wife, and got back on the boat ready for our next and final destination Oia.

Oia was I place I was told I ‘had’ to visit. It was the place I was told had the best sunset and the best views of the sea, so I had high hopes for this place even before setting for there. The ship was much emptier on the trip to Oia was an extra expense we had paid for (although Nadia had no way of checking so I’m sure there were a few who didn’t pay who came along). Once we got there we were given some important instructions, we should meet at the church with three blue domes, six bells, and three blue dolphins below it at 6 pm, on the dot, simple right. With that said we headed off towards Oia, but we had to walk up a steep winding path to get there. With my previous training, I found this easy, I walked past people, dodged the donkey mess on the floor, but had to take a few pit stops for Hannah to catch her breath. I was still sweating a lot but I was used to it now, wiping it off my brow whilst powering through the heat, the effort was definitely worth it for what we encountered at the top. Marble, marble everywhere, on the floors, on the walls of shops, even on some ornaments, Oia was indeed beautiful, with golden poles holding up white canopies and blue pools with wooden stools, red prickly plants, and white pebbles. We were shocked by how good this place looked compared to the rest of the island it was like night and day. All the stores and restaurants that were around looked incredibly expensive and the caliber of tourists here was definitely a cut above normal, you could tell by the way they dressed and the way they walked. We decided to locate the church building we had to be at by six so we’d know where to go when the time was right, it looked exactly as she described it. A small town square with a round golden image of three dolphins, then a large church with six bells and three blue domes. There were a few people near it taking pictures and starring, we didn’t stay too long as we didn’t want to miss the sunset. We followed the crowd down narrow paths till we got to the top of the town. We purchased some water and ice creams then found somewhere with the best view.

Around half an hour later and the sun had only moved down by what looked like three inches, we were too early, but so were many others, and the crowd increased dramatically as time went on. There were no seats so everyone had to either stand, or find a roof to sit on. People stood and climbed wherever they thought they would get a good view. When the sun did eventually come down for it hid behind clouds, the sky was clear for most of the day but only became cloudy just when the sun was setting, typical. All in all, we weren’t very impressed with the view, luckily we went to the place before that claimed to have the best sunsets in Santorini. Attempting to make our way back to the designation point via a different route was a bad idea, we saw some really interesting places but nothing that was familiar to us, we were very lost and with not that much time left. Luckily, we bumped into the very well dressed girls we saw on the ship (the way they were dressed made sense in Oia) who led us back to the church with a few minutes to spare. We really enjoyed Oia, apart from the fact that the sunset wasn’t great and there was only one public toilet which was difficult to find and charged you money to use it (I was bursting at one point), it’s definitely a place we’ll visit if we ever went back to Santorini.

Our last day in the Greek Island was spent by the pool, staring at the sky, going for the occasional dip, and saving a German lady form a locked toilet door. Santorini was a great place to spend a honeymoon, and although we should have done way more research, we ended up having a good time and going to some interesting places.