Santorini – one of the most photogenic places on earth………

We went on a volcano – volcanoes have lava in them – but it was 3km in the ground. There were some smelly spots and also some smoke coming out of a hole. It was hard walking cause it was a big mountain.

We got there by a wooden boat called ‘Captain Yiannis’. When the boat ride finished we went on a cable car back to the top of the cliff – we walked down at 10 o’clock in the morning but we were a bit tired in the afternoon and it’s very steep.

Santorini is lovely and nice and the buildings are nice and lovely. We came to Santorini with Millie and Desley. We played lots together. We played hide and seek with Millie and we had breakfast with each other. There was a pool at the house we stayed at. It was a really fun time.
By Zoi

We travelled 270 vertical steps to find the dream photo – I can’t believe I’ve said so many OMGs – just the most beautiful place in the world and seeing it through 5 children’s eyes is another experience in itself. I have the huge photo on my wall – that Cher (my daughter) bought me in anticipation of one day being able to see the real thing. And now I have……. and much, much more.

Sunset was amazing over the water from Oia and we even got to see the moon from the top of the world cafe.
Santorini has lived up to its expectations and much more.
By Des

My favourite thing about Santorini – was playing hide and seek with Millie and the pool and the cable car – the doors were awesome – it was much funner than than getting a donkey.

We got to the top and had an ice cream – I had a cup of ice-cream with chocolate mini bombs of dark chocolate and white chocolate and I wanted a cone so the nice man put an upside down cone in my cup.

I didn’t learn much about volcanoes on our tour cause I was having so much fun on the rocks. But I know that when a volcano erupts it can’t fire the whole world. They erupted when the dinosaurs were around but this one will erupt again in about 20 years because it erupts about every 75 years and last time was in 1950.

I love Wirra and Judd and Corey and I miss them so much.
By Moocha

After travelling 2 hours via a rather bumpy ferry we reached Santorini, but the journey was worth it! What a beautiful place to visit with such a beautiful family; the Milikings. Have had such an amazing and adventure filled time, made even better by the great company!
By Millie

We watched two sunsets at a really lovely town called Oia (pronounced ‘Ia’) – we also went to the same Restraunt on the two nights – the barman of the restaurant was really funny and he called Desley a New Zealander and he also liked to play tricks on her – one of the very very funny ones was he brought her a bottle of wine and when he was close he pretended to drop the bottle.
He liked to play lots of tricks and do lots of funny things with Desley.
On the second night he wore a hat that he made himself – he bought a green hat and a painted some of the hat and also glued a red or yellow donkey – which is local beer from Santorini and also had nuts and bolts on the hat.
They also made us very comfortable they saw that it was windy and got out lots of blankets and lanterns when we got there. We ate tomato fritters and fava bean dip which is a local delicacy and prawns that were grilled and in a saganaki.

One day when a big massive eruption happened here, I was very surprised that no one lost there lives – in one year there were 14 eruptions and the first one was very small so everyone moved off the island and went to other parts of Greece and then there were lots of small ones and then the big eruption.

It looked like a donut then but now it looks much different – it looks like a crescent moon with a few extra bits added on the side. It would normally take two hours to reach Crete in a really fast speed boat but with the massive eruption and earthquake there was a tsunami wave that reached Crete in just 20 mins and wiped out about half of Crete. All that was long ago – apparently it happened in 1653 BC which is about 3666 yrs ago.
The sunsets were very beautiful we have some really good photos – we will make a gallery – goodbye see you later
By Toby

In Santorini the history about the volcano is amazing because of how it formed an island every time it exploded and it’s expected to explode in about 15 yrs – normally they estimate that volcanoes explode every 75 years or so and sometimes they are little and other times new islands come up.

I liked walking down to the old port from Fira because I just liked walking. There were so many donkeys going up and down and others waiting for people. The donkeys almost squashed you to the wall when they are going past you.
Emilio thought the boat we went on to see the volcano was like a pirate boat made of wood and lots of sails.

After we got off the boat we went out for dinner for my mum’s birthday – we had a yummy dinner though it was cold in the wind but an amazing view. I liked the sunset.

Before dinner we went to a big rocky place that was an old castle where everyone sits to watch the sunset. Then we went out for dinner.

For morning tea the next day which was mum’s real birthday we had lots of yummy cakes on our balcony – very yummy. We have enjoyed having Desley and Millie stay with us – it’s been fun.
I have barely drank any water because it tastes disgusting cause it hardly rains here and they take the water out of the sea and take the salt out and add chlorine. It tastes revolting so we’ve been drinking soda water.
By Yasi

We took a bus to Heraklion and we went to the port then we saw lots of big boats. The boat we went on to Santorini was quite small compared to the other boats – but it wasn’t a car ferry it was a speed ferry. The boat rocked so much – I felt sick and after the boat we got picked up in a mini van and mummy drove a small car. Toby and Baba and I went to an office where we had to pay some money for the Car insurance but the car was free with the house we rented.
When we got to the house we got shown our rooms.
Baba and mummy, Zoi and Emilio shared an apartment which was room 206. Desley, Millie, me and Toby and Yasi (for one night) stayed in apartment 207. It had a wooden upstairs part where me and Mille and Toby and Yasi stayed. Yasi and Toby had to go top to tail for the first night. Yasi only stayed one night then she moved to mummy and baba’s apartment.

After we settled in we had lunch by the pool and we had a swim in the pool. We said the water was so cold like Lake Baikal. The we went to the black sand beach called Perissa beach. I made a sand castle and then I got bits of seaweed and stuck it to the back and made eyes and a mouth out of rocks in a circle shape on top and I found some little shrubs and ripped them up and put them as hair and fringes and eyebrows.
Then Mille and Zoi made one too and I kept adding to mine too. I kept leaving and said I’ve got a summer job and I went to go cover the boys in black sand and I kept saying they looked like Ninjas and that’s because they did.
When we went home we had dinner. We had pasta for dinner and we had a little bit of entree outside. Emilio went inside cause he had an earache. And we decided to move inside for dinner and we had pasta.
Emilio went straight to bed but Zoi stayed up for 10 mins – baba told her that he would come and get her soon. Zoi said 5 minutes but baba said no 10. We watched Madagascar 3 with Mille and then after 10 minutes Zoi went to bed, but we got to stay up with Millie and watch the rest.

Millie is a friend from Wangaratta – she’s Jeanette’s daughter and she was travelling so she decided to come over to visit us. She is very fun because she is.
The next day we went on a walk through the small streets of Fira to the next two villages called Firostefani and Imerovigli.

The streets were very nice to walk through – I kept turning back to keep up with the others cause they were so slow. Then baba and mama picked us up there by car. Then we went to a Ammoudi beach and had a picnic lunch and then we walked around the cliff to have a swim.

When we got there we saw some people who had dropped their camera and were diving to get it. We got dressed and had a swim and Mille, Yasi, Toby and I went to a place that was really good for jumping off the cliff.

The others jumped off a couple of times first but when we were about to leave Millie said we will swim over to the island and back and then I said – ‘ when I get in the water’ and then Mille said ‘which is never going to happen’ and then I said ‘oh really’ as I jumped in.

Then we walked back and we had a little drink at a cafe where Desley was waiting. Desley is one of babas friends from Bowen and she’s our naughty aunty.

We went up the cliff to Oia and found a beautiful place to take photos where you had to go on roofs – they were round dome roofs where people were having wedding photos. And after everyone had taken their photos we had a go of a few family photos and then we went to go find a dinner place and to watch the sunset. It was a rooftop restraunt – the barman was very funny. He kept saying Desley was from New Zealand – when she is actually from Brisbane in Australia. She called him a Russian but he’s really from Serbia. He was very funny and he pretended to drop the wine bottle he threw it up in the air and caught it. Then another thing he did – Desley said ‘ I’m not from NZ I’m from Brisbane, Australia’ – he said “same thing”.

Then the next day we went on a boat tour. We left the caldera which is the ring of land around a volcano ( the main part where all the tourists stay on), and landed on the volcano island we had a bit of a walk up to the active bit. At the end of that walk there was a hole where you have to put your hand in, to feel the steam and heat – the lady told us lots of information.

The group of Islands that create Santorini are Thira, Thirassia, Aspronissi,and Nea Kameni (new burnt island) that was left over from the last major volcanic eruption, 3600 years ago. The volcano erupted when there were people living on the island, similar to the people in Crete called the Minoans. These people had lots of signs that the volcano was going to erupt and so they all left to other places. We know this because they have never found any bones or signs of dead people from that time.

Another island is called Palea Kameni (old burnt island) and that’s where we stopped to go swimming in a hot spring. It was browny yellow water cause of the sulphur that comes from the volcano. The ship stopped 40 metres away from the hot springs and we had to jump off the ship and swim. It was pretty easy swimming. The sulphur in the hot springs could even make your bathers pinky red. Mine didn’t do that because sometimes it stains and sometimes it doesn’t. The water was warmer but not too hot. When we go back to the boat we set off to go to another part of Santorini called Oia where Desley and Millie got off the boat. When we got back to the port we talked about what transport we were going to get up the cliff. Toby, mummy and I chose donkeys and the others went up in a cable car.

The donkeys were fun, they were just like mountain horses. I felt sad for the donkeys cause they had to walk all the way up and down the steep hill all day long. When we met up with the others they had an ice-cream, so they walked us to the same ice-cream shop. You get to pick the flavour ice-cream – there weren’t many flavours – I had vanilla and my toppings were little white choc and dark choc balls and Santorini honey. It was delicious.
When we got to the car park we saw a donkey that was sad and tied up. We picked up Desley and Millie and we went to sit on some stairs for the sunset. After sunset we went to funny man’s restraunt again. It was yummy and you can find out more in the other blogs about mummy’s birthday dinner.
By Kiki

Santorini is definitely up there in my all time most amazing places to have ever visited. The children have written lots about fascinations with volcanoes etc. I wanted to focus on just how utterly beautiful the buildings, the crystal blue sea and the sunsets were.

When you see postcards about Santorini it is very easy to think – oh yeah they have used filters and photo shopped that etc etc but hey – it really is that beautiful. The white buildings and the blue topped churches are such a glorious contrast to the blue sky and the blue sea way down below, they are so inviting and truly delicious to the eye. I don’t think you would ever get time to watch TV on Santorini cause the views are just mesmerising and almost put you in a trance.
We were staying in the southern part of the island in an area called Perissa and luckily our cheap accommodation came with a car. We don’t normally hire cars due to the costs though it was so handy having a mini-van that fit us all. It meant we really got to see the island and especially my favourite part which is right over on the north tip, Oia. It wasn’t as crazy with tourist party-goers as Fira and had the most incredible white washed views and sunsets. The vibe is very relaxed as if time goes a lot slower (even by Greek terms) and the people were super friendly.

You often walk around and think how can they possibly build on that cliff and that hill – away from any roads – well our friendly barman told us – ‘all done by donkey – donkeys deliver everything in these streets – there’s no other way’. Poor donkeys!
Santorini would have to be the most photogenic place I’ve ever been to – you almost can’t take a bad photo! It glistens in the sun. Thank you Santorini – I can’t wait to come back.
By Christos

Guilt has got me writing, “Nine people went to Santorini, and eight people have written (or dictated) for the blog” he (Christos) says…. How do I say something new? And boy do I have a surprise for you at the end.

I found it fascinating to read that much Greek literature both in the modern day and historically call Santorini ‘Thera’. So where did Santorini come from? It actually came from the French who fell in love with St Irini church on the island group and referred to the group of Islands for that reason. Saint Irini easily morphs into Santorini. Good one huh? My trivia for today.

What an amazing place. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of parts and like Christos loved the town of Oia. I was fascinated to hear that this town was 80 percent destroyed by an earthquake in 1956……. I remain fascinated by the layers of sediment from the volcanoes eruptions over the years. The pumice, the volcanic ash, the red rock. And how it makes the land feel so alive and ever-changing. Coming from Australia, that is so relatively geomorphologically (is this the right word?) stable, the changing world and impact of human kind on the earth seems so much more tangible. I’m not saying that humans have an impact on when volcanoes or earthquakes happen, I just feel that human connectedness to the living earth is easier to grasp as a concept, because the earth too is changing and growing.

Talking about changing, as the kids have mentioned, my age changed whilst in Thera or Santorini, and guess what I got for my birthday? Do you remember my ‘fashion blog’ entry from the Ukraine and Thessaloniki?

Well, I said I would try and get a photo in a one piece suit for you… Well here I am, gracing the beach back in Crete. Special hey? I hope someone has a fancy dress party that I can wear it to soon…. It’s not quite my style, I had hoped for strapless, but the texture is ‘slimy’ to say the least. The kids love it.

By Mama Miliking