After seeing all of the cool photo spots around town, Julia decided she wanted to get sunrise photos, and Pokin decided she wanted to suck it up and go as well.

My bud decided he wanted sleep and I was roped in as an unwilling participant.

That said, once I was dragged out of bed and got to see the sun rise over Oia, I have to admit it was pretty worth it.  The streets were waaay less crowded – mostly other crazy photographers and Instagram couples.

We got to all of the top photo spots and were able to grab some cool photos.

We couldn’t stay out too long though because Pokin had a food tour booked in Fira.  It wasn’t originally supposed to be for today, but Pokin was way too sick to go on Tuesday, and the owner, Laura of Santorini Food tour was gracious enough to let her move it to Friday, but it meant we had to grab breakfast and get our way to Fira by 10:30AM. So a few more photos and it was time to dash back.

Breakfast!

The distance isn’t that great, but there are only 30 taxi drivers in Santorini and not a lot of Uber drivers, and it turns out there are anywhere up to 2-6 cruise ships that can bring thousands of passengers that dock In Fira every day.
 
Today looked to be a busy day.  By breakfast time there were already 2 cruise ships in dock.  We had to beat the Cruise ship rush to get an uber.

“Wait time 15 minutes.  But maybe up to 40 minutes, “says the Uber app.

So we err on the side of caution and leave a litte bit earlier.

Fira is the main town in Santorini.  And on arrival it was definitely a lot busier than Oia, and less picturesque.  Fira is connected continuously two two other cities – Firostefani – (crown of Fira), and Imeregovigli.  The food tour started in St George Square.

While we were waiting by the church, the bells started clanging in cacophonic waves.  “Square” on the side of a caldera where space is precious is a generous descriptor, meaning we were right on top of the bells.

“How do people here handle this?” I wonder, something like 10 minutes into the bell ringing.

Turns out the church is only open a couple times a year for a religious ceremony and we won th lottery on being there on that day.

Knowing that made at least the procession more interesting.

At about 10:30, our guide, Dimi showed up.  She’s one of several guides with the company, which was founded by a couple Laura, and Aristoeles who were passionate about travel and spreading their love of food.  As the story goes, they ended up going on a food tour overseas quite by accident, and realizing there was no equivalent in Santorini, started this business to bring it to Santorini.

We started our first stop at a coffee shop, where we got to try a traditional Greek coffee.  It turned out to be quite like Turkish coffee, because really the two countries are next to each other.  “One of the things people don’t realize about Greece is how middle eastern we are, “Dimi explained.   We sipped our Greek coffee as we had our spoonsweets (sweetened fruits), before making our way to the next stop – a local brewery.

Before that though, we stopped by the Three Bells where Dimi had a treat for us – easter pastries that were seasoned with Mastiha.  Mastiha is a type of local pine that is used to make a liquor aperitif, as well as other sweets.  This pastry is normally hard to find outside of the holiday season, but Dimi found a year round bakery and got some for us all to try.

Because it’s already end of season, we only had one type of beer to try, which was one more beer than I needed, but I was plenty fine for my bud.  Here we got to try fava, some Santorini tomatoes, and some fried zucchini as we perched by the caldera.

The next stop was to olive oil tasting, where we started with a serving of “moonshine”, which tasted a lot like grappa.

We were reminded of how to do an olive oil tasting, and we tried the olive oil by itself as well as with some cheeses, tomatoes, and cured meats.   We washed it down with more moonshine and went to the next stop.

We next stopped for some streetfood – souvlaki. 

By now we were getting close to our next tour and Pokin started to get worried, but Dimi offered to call the tour company for us.

“You have to understand we all know one another.  It’s a very small industry so it’s no problem” She calls and speaks to them.

“Don’t worry. They’ll wait for you.” And that was that!

We’re at the last stop, and we wrap up with donuts to finish up at the food tour.

Onwards to the wine tour.

Santorini is actually a really dry, windy climate. So it’s tough to survive as grape vines. To maximize their chances of survival, santorini grape vines are woven into a circular basket shape to protect the vines. They are allowed to be on a drip system for a couple years, and afterwards the irrigation has to be removed and the wines are watered via ocean mist.

The most popular type of wine is Vinsanto, made from grapes dried in the sun, and the most popular grape varietals are Athiri , Aidani, Assyrtiko and Mandelaria. We went to 3 different wineries to check out the wines, before ending up at sunset in the most scenic of the wineries. Was fine. Cocoa is better.