2010.10.15The wind stopped the next day and the sky was crystal clear. I walked down stairs to other hotels beneath us on the cliff. They have undisturbed view of the full circle of the caldera.

Because it had been too windy and too many people at Oia the previous day, we decided to go there again in the morning. It’s only a 20-minute drive from Firostefani to Oia. One of the villas at the northern tip of the island claims to be “the most popular site for marriage proposals” – that might not be an exaggeration.

Coming back from Oia, We had lunch at another cliff restaurant. When we checked out the hotel, I asked the owner what he would do in winter. He said that he would close the hotel and go back to Athens in two weeks, and then he would come back to the island again the next year. Most hotels and restaurants will be closed in the low season. The owner told me that late May and early October were good time to visit the island, “you cannot imagine how crowded the street is in summer”.

Our flight was at 7pm. We still had a lot of time. For the past two days, we only drove around the cliff side, so we decided to see the other side of the island first. Unlike Corfu Island, Santorini is mostly barren. While the cliff is decorated with the dazzling white buildings, at the end of the slow slope going down from the cliff, there are all black sand beaches. We stopped at Monolithos beach, which has some strange sand stone formation. Only a few people on the beach, some of them took off their clothes. This might be one of the nude beaches on the island.

We continued driving sort of randomly. We drove around Emporio’s town square a bit, then at Akrotiri, we failed to locate its archaeological site. Sitting in the small booth by the beach, we figured this was still not the end of the road yet, so we decided to keep on driving to the very south of the island. Along the road, we could see the Caldera from another direction. Those white houses on top of the cliff became just a white line. There is a light house at the road end. It is called Cape Akrotiri. From head to toe, we covered almost the whole island.

We arrived at the airport before it’s getting dark. This was the fourth small airport we had been to in the trip, Luxor, Abu Simbel, Corfu and Santorini, their airports all have merely one building with no more than two gates. From here, we were going to the last stop of the trip, Athens.