Santorini – A day trip to Fira (Day Three)!

It is Day three in Oia and on waking, things are still bright and sunny with not even a brush stroke of cloud in the sky. We plan to go to capital city Fira, which just like Oia is perched on the edge of caldera. In addition WE WILL conquer the Oia castle throne today, by all means.

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All set for Fira!

Off to Fira and here’s my checklist: Hat, Sunnies, Bag

Oh wait! and ‘Panache’

We took a local bus from Oia to Fira. The buses depart every 15-20 mins and take about half an hour to reach Fira, winding up along the caldera taking some sharp hair pin like bends. Other alternative is to rent a quad bike. But they (quad bikes) hardly make a point because there aren’t any great spots to make a stop on the way. The buses are pretty comfortable in terms of ride and frequency.

While still in Oia, in veranda of our suite

On the way to Fira : not much is present elsewhere on the island.

Unlike Oia, Fira is a town with roads and rush of vehicles, bigger shops and plenty of restaurants and viewpoints. Large cruise ships dock here and you see herds of tourists moving through its streets in close groups. Fira has lots of museums to visit, we did not go to any but just roamed around the town and shopped a bit and had lunch.

Inviting exteriors of a seaside restaurant

Cruise ships and caldera views from Fira

The views in Santorini are too beautiful to stay indoors so no museums this time!

After scanning the markets in Fira and Santorini my list of things to buy :

Jewellery (imitation and gold – both are abundant)

Greek sandals (shoe lovers will be more than pleased to see the options)

Olive wood kitchen ware

Greek wine

Although you do get clothes, t-shirts, souvenirs and all the touristy paraphernalia , these are the things that caught my fancy and came all the way to my home from Greece 🙂

Also even if you do not like to shop, consider this a good exercise for the sake of all the greek yoghurt and feta cheese that you will be eating in all three meals of the day.

Shady (only literally) shopping streets.

That’s another interesting store in Fira, the ‘well’ does its job ‘well’ of drawing people 😉

Here we are after some shopping

My husband gets this shot while I get some shoes 🙂

After enough shops and sights, the hungry and thirsty couple randomly picked a cozy restaurant.

Cozy-ness everywhere!

I sat under this blooming tree.

Decor right overhead

While we waited for our order…this was done with.

So how was the food?

A picture is worth thousand words.

That speaks of the greek roots of my name 🙂

Fira being a bigger town than Oia or Imerovigli, many people stay here and take trips to Oia and/or Imerovigli. That could be a good option, especially for people who aren’t too flexible in terms of food and walking as there are alternatives to both here.

After this lunch we took a bus back to Oia. It was already five. For sunset from third different locale it was bathe-change-run situation. Although we did decide not to stop anywhere on the way but that’s anything but practical thinking.

On the way to Oia castle

It makes me perfectly happy when somebody takes a nice picture of us at places like this!

Finally, finally we were bang on time to find a place on Oia castle, safe enough for my wee bit acrophobic self. And all the question marks floating in my head regarding the celebrity status of Oia castle among other viewpoints, evaporated as we took in a 360 degree view. Honestly, the place is very crowded and very windy. And I prefer to steer away from crowd as much as possible but I have no memories of that, all I remember is what I saw beyond the boundaries of the castle. I have no adjectives or figures of speech to describe what we saw, although I could use some through google but I’m choosing not to. May be you will have some (or many) adjectives or similes or may be you will be speechless. I cannot imagine. Either ways I’m sharing these pictures with you.