I started the day with a jog, which I don’t usually do while on vacation. However, this time I really looked forward to it. I have found that jogging on vacation is fun, because it allows you to see the city from a different angle, and also when not a lot of people are out and about. You can even just take a morning walk, if jogging is not your thing!
I took a jog to one end of the city, and got to see the outskirts of the town, as well as experience some hill training 😅.
Then, we went back to the hotel for a healthy breakfast, and sat and munched while we soaked in the view from the breakfast room.
We made our way to the capital town of Fira, which was more hoppin’ and happenin’ than Imerovigli. We were going to take the bus to get us to one of the beaches, but on a whim, we decided to rent an ATV. I am so glad we did! It was only €45 Euros for the day, and meant we did not have to sit in a hot bus wearing our masks, as well as being able to stop anywhere we wanted to!
In Fira, we got to see the charming and small alley ways with beautiful magenta flowers overhead, much like many of the pictures of Santorini. There were hundreds of restaurants, and we picked one that overlooked the city and the coast.
While we were in Fira, sirens went off and we got messages on our phones that the spread of Covid-19 has increased, which made us a little nervous. They just told us to exercise extra caution. I know at the same time Spain has talked about shutting down again, because Covid-19 was getting really bad there, again.
It likely was a precaution to prevent the same thing from happening in Greece. In any case, we only had one day left in the country, so we felt okay, knowing we were going home soon.
After our rest break, we took our ATV and headed down to one of the beaches, the White Sand beach. We ended up taking a wrong turn, and went down by the ferries. It was nice to see the ferries coming in and leaving. The sun was hot, however, and there was no shade, and the detour had taken us about a half-an-hour out of the way. There was no way to apply sunscreen on the road, so we just had to suffer through the sun. And it was about 2 pm, so the sun was the strongest it would be.
We took a turn down a gravel road and went around a bend, and saw a rocky beach, and a restaurant. It looked a little run down, and we found out this was not the White Sand beach, but Kambia beach. It wasn’t what we had in mind, so we punched the Red Sand beach into Google, another popular beach, and followed the road for 16 minutes to get there.
The thing is, when you are trying to get to another beach, you have to go around the beach in an arc from the mainland- you can’t just drive straight along the coast, which would have been much faster.
All in all, we were glad we did not settle for the Kambia beach, because the Red Sand beach was beautiful. Santorini is made up of an old volcano, which I think is still active. This is why there is a lot of basalt rock around, and why the beach is red. Here there was actually sand, instead of rocks, which made us really happy.
Lesson:
We have learned that you really need to be sure what type of beach you are going to. My friend who I was with could only swim when there was sand, not rocks. When we were in Italy, we went to what was called a private beach, but there was no beach to it- it was a giant rock and you could not ease into the water. You could only jump in. Make sure when you’re traveling you know what type of beach you’re going to! Is there any way we could rename these non-beaches to cliffs? I guess that has an entirely different meaning. How about the rocky beach?
Anyways, after playing around at the Red Sand beach, we made our way back home, soaked from swimming, and freezing because the sun was starting to set and the wind from the open-air ATV made it really cold!
When we got back to our hotel, we had dinner, and were happy that they served hot chocolate to warm us up. Yum!
Watch the video below to experience Day 3 in Santorini with us!