More Reviews
2006
Camille Chin: For your big, fat Greek vacation
While Santorini is home to 14,000 people, 500,000 tourists call this island home for a few days every year.
And why not? The Cyclades' southern-most island, Santorini is said to have
the best sunsets, one-of-a-kind white-, red- and black-sand beaches as well
as a large caldera, the result of one of the world's biggest volcanic
eruptions. The volcano's last upsurge was in 1956, which devastated the
village of Oia and buried what is now Chelidonia Villas. Excavated and restored
in the early 1980s, Chelidonia's nine villas, better described as cave homes,
opened to the public in 1986. The caves date back to the Middle Ages and each
differs in size and structure depending on who built them. (...)
2003
Jerry Portwood Blog
Jerry's travel blog starts in Athens, so his Oia diary comes after the first third of the text.
The following excerpt by the author Jerry Portwood describes the dangers to very nice guests coming to Chelidonia late in the year. There is less work and more wine around then, to put it simply. The following scene Jerry describes is set in the wine cellar of our friend Tassos, the plumber. The performers are mule drivers, farmers and other Oian locals.
"We enter and see tables strewn with food: spicy sprigs
of arugula, whole, fried sardine-like fish and bowls of a
green paste made with garlic and other herbs, loaves of
bread. A gnarled, hairy man with a denim peasant cap gets
up and begins to dance, snapping his fingers. I thought
only Zorba the Greek did this. Then a barrel is opened
and more wine is given all around. "YAMAS!" we all toast.
And we see where they crush the grapes in the corner and
learn how he makes his wine, not to sell, just to share
with his friends. Then a man walks into the revelry with
a dead rabbit and plops it in front of me on the table.
No one flinches and the owner of the house and wine
cellar begins to pet it. Patricio says, "I've never felt
a dead rabbit," and he pets it. And then a box of
pastries is opened up next to it and baklava and other
nutty sweet confections are passed around. It's late and
we're drunk and happy."