Welcome back to Sunnies and Sangria for the second half of our Greece vacation. If you didn’t read my first post you can read it here.

Day 4-

On Sunday we packed up all our things and spent the morning by the pool just relaxing and taking advantage of the unlimited drinks and service at the villa. In the afternoon we said our goodbyes to my family and headed to our hotel in Akrotiri. It’s about a 15-minute drive from the villa and 20 drive from the Fira. We stayed at the Astarte Suites. I chose this boutique hotel because it looked like it was the most reasonably priced nice hotel with beautiful views.

Astarte Suites

If you watched my insta stories you would have seen the incredible view we had right from our private porch. (if you didn’t then please follow me now on Instagram- @sunniesandsangria) Coming from a crazy fancy villa this was definitely a downgrade. I’m not going to lie to you! It was a 5 star boutique hotel with 15 private rooms. The room had a hot tub and in the pictures it looked great. But it had a cover on it that looked way to “blahhhh” for us to touch so we left it alone. The beds were comfortable and they delivered breakfast to your room at whatever time you chose. They had a nice selection of fruits and drinks.

But again I’m skipping ahead! In the late afternoon, we did a horseback riding sunset tour. It got insane reviews! So we were very excited. However to be honest it was only exciting when we actually got to the beach after slowly walking through tons of vineyards for 45minutes. The only thing that makes sense to me is that the people who reviewed this activity had never done a horse back riding tour so they loved it! Ben and I did one in Peru and every step of the way was magical. This fell short for me personally and Ben felt the same way.

I don’t want to detour you from doing this tour but that was my feeling about it. If you are in Santorini near Akrotiri, go and watch the sunset by the famous windmill instead!

Day 5-

We arranged with the hotel to rent a Quad Bike through a partnering company. It was great they delivered the bike to us, gave Ben a short lesson and off we went to explore the island.

Santorini is a very small island. You can get from one side to the other in about an hour depending on traffic. It’s very easy to navigate and the rental came with a map. I knew I wanted to visit Perissa, a small beach town and walk on the boardwalk so we went there first because it was the closest. It was a cute town and if you wanted to hang there you totally could! They had many chairs and umbrellas available for rent.

Then, we went to Fira the main town and did some souvenir shopping and walked around. It was like a huge market place! Very Jerusalem like. A lot of Greece felt like Israel.

Next, we went back to Oia because I wanted to get some more pictures and explore it on our own. On the way up we went on crazy windy roads with incredible views! This was hands down Ben’s favorite part of Santorini! He loved the Quad Bike! However, I need to warn you that you must be careful! It is very dangerous if you aren’t careful. Half the vehicles on the road are either mopeds or quad bikes or small cars and tour vans. One more tip would be to get the fastest largest bike available so that you don’t hold up traffic and can go faster. We drove around for most of the day and then headed back to the hotel around 6. We checked out and left to the airport back to Athens.

Athens

We got to the King George Luxury Resorts hotel around 1030. We had our complimentary drink because we are SPG gold members and enjoyed it with the beautiful view of the Acropolis.

Location wise it’s a great hotel. The staff was wonderful and the room was very clean and comfortable. My one complaint would be that the shower head wasn’t attached to the wall, it was one of those portable one that you can use in the bath, and it kept falling and it was very uncomfortable to shower … If we had been staying more than one night then I would have complained, maybe it was a bad room. Who knows…

Day 6-

We did a Mythological tour of Athens. We met our group in front of the Olympian Zeus Temple and bought a city pass for about 30 Euro to get into all the sites. I always enjoy going to these sites with a tour guide so that they can show us where to go and the history of the location. We walked to the Acropolis after and took that incredible historical site in!

I really loved Athens. People give mixed reviews. I enjoyed the history and culture and I could have stayed another day but we got in all the major sites on the tour and still had time to get our souvenirs.

Around 3 we headed to the airport back to NY. Our flight was at 5:30 and we landed in NY at 10:30 pm. We did our best to stay up the entire 11 hours so that we wouldn’t be jetlagged when we landed. Again this worked! I recommend thinking about times and jetlag when flying!

Well that’s all! I just basically filled you guys in on all our trip details. Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments below or email me. If you haven’t already subscribed to my blog, please do so now!

Cheers,

Batsheva