SANTORINI TRAVEL GUIDE & COST 2024 🇬🇷 GREECE

Hello everyone, my name is Chris and in this video I'm going to be showing some of the amazing things that you can do on a trip to Santorini. I will cover some of the main attractions to visit, the costs and some tips. Overall I spent 5 days there with my wife Carol and we could definitely see during that time why the island is so famous. We flew to Santorini from the Greek capital Athens. You can find flights as cheap as 30 euros but you can also get the ferry there for as Santorini is part of the Cyclades group of islands and has a unique appearance due to a huge volcanic eruption which occurred around 3,600 years ago. We stayed in the village of Firos Tiffany which is right next to the capital of Santorini, Fira. The apartment we stayed at is called Alona Studios and the current prices are showing around 90 euros a night for 2 people during the shoulder season and low season. And in the high season months of July and August around 110 euros. Doing a quick search on booking.com shows that you can find a place around Fira for 40-60 euros a night for 2 people during the low season if you're on a budget, but obviously this will be in more simple accommodations. The same search for a cheap accommodation during the high season shows prices around 70-100 euros. When searching for 5 star hotels it shows prices in the low season around 165 euros, but you can also see that there is a place that costs almost 4,000 euros a night. So there are definitely some extreme luxury options here. Doing the same 5 star search in the high season shows around 300-400 euros minimum, and then obviously there are still the same ultra luxury options that cost thousands of euros a night. We were in a great location as the village was much quieter than the capital Fira, but we could still walk to the centre of the capital in 15 minutes. We were also right next to the cliffside where you will find the iconic views of Santorini, with the whitewashed buildings and the classic Greek churches. From here you can see a few other islands that are part of the Santorini Island group. There are many different boat tours available that you can take to these different islands and other kinds of sightseeing tours. The main highlight for us in Santorini was walking around the different villages and capital on the cliffside. We visited in May in the shoulder season so it wasn't too busy, which made it much nicer to walk around the small alleyways. In the peak months the crowds can be quite overwhelming as there isn't much walking space. Fira has many shopping streets and hundreds of restaurants and bars with incredible sea views. We ate at a restaurant called Kalia, you can have a meat dish for around 27 to 30 euros and Carol ate a veggie pasta dish for 21 euros. The cheapest glass of wine is 12 euros and a soda costs 6 euros. This is an expensive restaurant because of the location and the views, but you can easily find many cheaper street food options if you're on a budget. If you're interested in doing some long walks or hiking, we highly recommend the coastal walk from Fira to Ia. The walk took around 3 hours and it's not too difficult. It gives you a great opportunity to pass through some quieter villages and also see some of the untouched parts of the island that have no construction. Ia is one of the most popular places to visit on the island and many people stay here. Just like Fira you will have the shops and the restaurants everywhere and there are also many nice old windmills. Here you can find the ruins of a 15th century venetian castle which is one of the most popular sunset spots on the island. Below the main town of Ia is Amudi Bay which we walked to by the steps near the venetian castle. It's a beautiful place to visit with unique red volcanic cliffs and there are many seafront restaurants to eat at serving fresh seafood caught by the local fishermen. We ate a big fish for 2 for 57 euros. If you want to cool down there is a swimming area here, you can follow the path that continues after the restaurants which leads you to a rocky area with a concrete platform where many people do cliff jumping and swimming. Ia is probably the most popular place to watch the sunset in Santorini so expect there to be huge crowds. Even in May it was hard to walk around at this time. There are still plenty of other nice and quiet sunset spots on the island though. On the other days we would just go to the coast near our apartment in Firos di Farni and there was never that many people and the views were still great. For transport we got around on the local buses as the main station on the island is situated close to where we were staying in Fira. The bus prices cost between 2 to 2.50 euros depending on where you were visiting. You can rent a car for around 20 euros in the low season and 40 euros in the high season. We went from Fira to Camari beach which cost 2 euros. Camari beach is one of the best beaches on the island, a beautiful long volcanic beach and just like everywhere that we visited you have the incredible mountain cliff views. We were surprised to find that the beach was pretty much empty still in May. It still wasn't too hot at the time of the year so maybe that's why. There are also some historical sites that you can visit on Santorini. One is on top of the mountain that we just showed above Camari beach. This is an archaeological site called Ancient Fira and cost 6 euros to enter. It is said to have been first inhabited around 8th century BC. Another place is the Akrotiri archaeological site. This site was destroyed in the 16th century BC due to the massive volcanic eruption that I mentioned at the beginning of the video. This eruption is considered to be one of the largest volcanic events in human history and destroys settlements on other nearby islands. It cost 16 euros to visit. It is also worth visiting the capital Fira at night. It is more relaxed to walk around and you can see all the buildings lit up on the coast. Here you can find many bars and nightclubs. We did some bar hopping on one of the nights and had a great time. The good thing about Santorini and the greek islands is that you can easily visit many other nearby islands by ferry. We ended up spending a month in the Cyclades and visited the islands of Milos, Paros, Naxos and Mykonos. Milos is another volcanic island but looks completely different to Santorini. The landscapes here look more like we were on the moon in some places and this was the quietest island that we visited on this trip. Paros was also very laid back and had many beautiful beaches and villages to visit. Naxos was probably our favourite island of them all as it has tons of beaches, interesting historic sites and once again many nice villages and towns. Mykonos was our least favourite even though it's so popular. It is beautiful but the places that we visited in Mykonos didn't seem to be any better than what we had seen on the other islands and it was very busy. The beaches and towns are pretty much the same as you can find on the other islands in the Cyclades so it didn't really seem to justify our expenses on the island being two to three times higher. From Santorini you can also get direct ferries to other spectacular islands like Crete which we have visited in the past. Crete is the largest greek island so there is so much to do there and you probably need multiple weeks to see it properly. This island has some of the best beaches that we have visited in all of Greece like Elafonisi beach and Balos beach. It also has a different architecture style compared to the Cyclades as it was ruled by the Venetians for a long time. So in some cities and towns it looks more Italian and you won't have the white and blue building style that you find in the Cyclades. So hopefully this video helped to give you some ideas on what you can do during a trip to Santorini. As it is such a popular place it is best to visit with the expectation that it's going to be very busy. We got lucky because we went in the shoulder season and there weren't many cruises there at the time. You can check cruise schedules online if you want to try and avoid them. In the video description we will add links for the accommodation that we stayed and the tours that you can do. If you would like to see the island in more detail we have a playlist in the video description and comment section which has two videos showing much more. If you enjoyed the video drop a like to help support us, subscribe if you like to see more videos like this and we will see you in the next one.