Oia (pronounced E-ah) is where all the stereotypical photos of Greece come from.  It’s a town perched on top of a caldera seeming to come right out of the cliffs.

From afar, the clusters of buildings on top of the caldera look like clumps of snow.

Oia was originally inhabited by ship builders and their crew.  The region faced constant attacks by pirates (particularly from North Africa) and to help fend off pirates, a lot of the steps were designed to be irregular to make it more difficult to run up in the event of an attack.  Because the area was seismically active, ironically oceanfront land wasn’t considered valuable until the 1980s, where the world began to recognize the area as a tourist destination. Oia is located on the island of Thira, and the whole cluster of islands is known as Santorini.  This ring of islands was formed by a partially submerged volcano, of which the centre core is still considered active.

To save on building costs, the initial cave houses were carved out of the naturally occurring pumice stone.  This also made it easier to keep the buildings cool as the region got very hot in the summer, and very windy in the winter.  The houses get their signature white colour from a mixture of ground up limestone and salt, because those building materials were the most easily accessible. The white white helped reflect light and keep the buildings cooler, and as a bonus, this combination created a slick finish that allowed rainwater and fog to be captured and funneled to water basins.

We weren’t supposed to be in Oia yet.  We were originally going to be in Imerovigli but due to Pokin being sick, we thought less transfers were better.

So after we waved goodbye to Artemis and his wife Ana we got onto a transport towards Katikies Oia Santorini.

The main throughway is not open to pedestrians (it used to be open to donkeys), so we were dropped off on the main road where hotel staff greeted us to help transport our luggage.

And help we needed!  There is hardly any flat ground here, and the entire hotel complex was spread across multiple steps and levels.

At reception we were greeted by a fellow who helped us sort out the remainder of our travel hiccups, before giving us a quick tour of the property.

We were settled into room 14, which was luckily one of the most secluded buildings on the property.  One word of warning – depending on what you book you could find yourself situated in a high traffic or high noise area, but not our room – it was located at the far end of a pool tucked in its own nook. 

Once we got situated, Pokin crawled into bed, and my bud and I settled into working on the balcony deck.  Pretty nice.  Pretty nice view.

At one point it was nice enough that my bud wondered if we needed to have a mid life crisis and just move to Oia and run our own hotel.  I like the sound of Bear Villas.

Before we knew it, it was night time.  Pokin surfaced for us to try a hotel recommended restaurant -Melitini.

Then she crawled back to bed. I got to check out the night view of Oia though first. It gets abruptly dark once the sun goes behind the caldera.

That night none of us slept. Pokin wouldn’t stop coughing.  Basically all night long.  It was a long night.