In 2016, I travelled to Crete, Greece and of course could not resist going on a day trip to Santorini. A place of wanderlust dream & envy.

It took us just over an hour to get there by fast boat and then we got on a coach to take us to the first town.

At first glance, it wasn’t the picture perfect landscape that we were expecting but as we drove further up into Oia, we started to see what Santorini was all about.

It was intriguing to see that all of the picture perfect shots required certain angles, many of which you could not get without staying in one of the sea-front hotels.

On picture 1 you can see the wasteland, brown dirt & shabby metal fencing as we had walked a little further to avoid the crowds. Comparing this to picture 2 which is much more picturesque and shows the brilliant white & perfect blue sea that we all picture when someone mentions Santorini.

It is still definitely worth visiting, though I personally felt like a day trip was enough.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a true day trip without stopping for ice cream & being the greedy chocoholic that I am, I got the extra rich dark chocolate ice cream & it was honestly heaven. This was at Lolita’s gelato.

We also got to swim in a volcanic spring which was phenomenal and we travelled on a beautiful wooden boat.

I really love Greece and though Santorini wasn’t 100% what I was expecting from pictures I had seen, it is well worth a visit. Make sure you take a few extra Euros though as it is a lot more expensive than the mainland!

|| Related: A Day in Athens, Greece ||

Have you visited anywhere that didn’t quite live up to expectations?

Bex