Before leaving Greece, I wanted to visit a place that had been on my list for a long time – the island of Santorini. Because it’s super crowded in high season, I decided to visit in December, in the lowest of low season. This had its pros and cons. There were barely any other tourists and accommodation was cheap. No fighting for photo spots and a jacuzzi on my balcony. Not bad. On the other hand, most of Fira and Oia was shut down – all the scenic cafes and restaurants looking over the crater were closed, as were most hotels along the crater. Sometimes it felt like walking around a ghost village. By accident, I made the right choice of staying in central Fira, which is the island’s capital and therefore always has some stuff open around the main square – restaurants, hotels and the main bus stop for all towns around the island. As all the scooter rentals were closed, this became quite essential for me and I was glad that I hadn’t decided to stay in Oia.

On my first full day on Santorini, I went on the famous hike from Fira to Oia, along the crater rim coast. It was super pretty with stunning views all along the way and not too long either. I took lots of time taking photos and exploring everything there was to see and still arrived in Oia way before sunset.

90% of the restaurants and hotels in Oia were closed for the season, but it was still a beautiful place to visit. The famous sunset viewpoint is very much worth coming here and it was nice to share it only with about 20 or so other tourists rather than fighting for a spot in high season. I took my hundreds of pictures in piece and watched the light go from golden to pink.

Then I rushed to get the bus back to Fira as the next one would have been quite a bit later. Low season bus schedules! Oh well. Another day, I went and took the bus to Pyrgos first – a cute Santorini village without much tourist influence. I then hiked up to Prophet Elias viewpoint and monastery – the highest point on the island. There’s nice views on the way up, but the monastery was unfortunately closed, so I decided to hike down on the other side to Emporio.

Emporio was a really nice surprise! I hadn’t expected much, but the village has pretty little alleys and a very relaxed feel. From here, I took the bus to Perissa to see the black beach. It had turned into a grey day by then and I didn’t expect much – and it really wasn’t that special if you have seen black sand before in your life.

Next to working quite a bit and walking around Fira, I ventured out one more time, mainly to visit the famous Red Beach. I thought I was going to do some hike that I looked up on Maps.me, but some stuff didn’t actually connect and I felt a bit sick, so I stuck to a short visit and returned on the paved road to Akrotiri. Unfortunately, I missed out on visiting the ruins there, as I thought they wouldn’t be that special. The village was nice but it was rather windy, cold and I was feeling tired and weak.

My FOMO didn’t let me catch the bus straight back to Fira though, so I hopped off in Megalochori to visit the village and the famous rock window „heart of Santorini“. It was pretty, but I was definitely ready for the jacuzzi and some down time afterwards!

All in all, I had some great days in Santorini. Combined with work, five days was the right amount of time to spend there in order to be able to visit everything that I wanted to see. Overall, only the hike from Fira to Oia and Oia sunset views really wow-ed me, so I feel like you can also make this island a quick stop along the way. Here are my best photos!