Santorini was filmed during April 2013 by dimid, a timelapse photographer from Minsk, Belarus, and his colleague Zweizwei from Korea.
Bedazzling beauty: Now that it’s a brand-new year, people around the world are beginning to book their spring, summer and fall trips to Greece. Since many will be spending some time on Santorini, I’m posting some inspiring videos that may help them plan what to see — and perhaps even where to stay.
The film at the top of this post is a gripping 2.5-minute timelapse video that highlights some of the island’s superlative scenery, and shows why Santorini is not only one of the most popular destinations in Greece, but also one of its most well-known islands worldwide.
Expedia’s Santorini Vacation Travel Guide video features five minutes of magnificent island views and scenery
The video above was produced by Expedia several years ago to accompany its Santorini Vacation Travel Guide, but its images are timeless. Slightly more than 5 minutes long, the film features many of the island’s renowned sunset and caldera views, but also shows some of Santorini’s stunning beaches and coastal scenery.
The video below is over 15 minutes long and it, too, showcases the enticing views and mesmerizing scenery that enthrall the nearly two million people who visit the island each year. But it also spotlights many of the island’s most popular places to stay, dine and drink, and demonstrates how dozens of Santorini’s cliff-edge hotels, infinity swimming pools, bars and restaurants look as luscious as the surrounding natural landscapes and seascapes.
And if you’re still trying to decide where to stay and dine during your trip, this video could help you narrow your options — signs for many of the resorts and restaurants can be seen in the film.
Enjoy the amazing views, and happy planning!
Santorini HD The best island in Greece was filmed by Sim-Xat HD (YouTube contributor Σιμος Χατζης)
Thanks to the clifftop location of Aneroussa Beach Hotel …
… we enjoyed exceptional beach, sea and sunset views …
… from our room and its very comfortable veranda
Didn’t want to leave: After three nights at Andros Town, we moved across the island to spend the next stage of our spring holiday at a hotel near Batsi, a popular beach resort area on the northwest coast of Andros.
This marked only the second time in all our travels to Greece that we have stayed at two different places on the same island (in October 2013, we similarly split our stay between a beach resort and town during our two-week vacation on Naxos.)
For accommodations, we chose Aneroussa Beach Hotel, which is located on the coast south of Batsi at the small but delightful Delavoyia beach.
We could not have picked a better place — it perfectly suited our personal travel tastes and accommodation preferences, and it quickly became one of our favourite hotels out of the more than three dozen we have stayed at in Greece so far. In fact, when it came time to move on after our scheduled 3-night stay, we didn’t want to leave, wishing we could have spent more time at the Aneroussa.
Please click here or on the link below to continue reading our review and to see a video and photos of Aneroussa Beach Hotel on page 2 of this post.
My Aneroussa Beach Hotel album on Flickr contains 160 photos showing the hotel grounds, our room and terrace, the Aneroussa beachfront, and some of the hotel facilities. Click here to see the pictures.
I love this fab drone aerial video of Mykonos, my first and still one of my all-time favourite Greek islands. The 4-minute film features some of the island’s most picturesque places, including the Mykonos Town harbour, the rustic Little Venice seafront, Paraportiani church, the world-famous windmills, and gorgeous Psarou and Super Paradise beaches. (The ultra-luxe hotel with the private plunge pools is the Grecotel Mykonos Blu resort at Psarou, in case you were wondering.) Click the arrow to admire the Mykonos beauty from above.
Korthi Bay and the village of Ormos Korthiou are seen in a photo from the Andros travel and information website Island Andros.
Quick peek: Have you ever experienced that nagging feeling, while travelling from one scheduled holiday destination to the next, that you’re missing out on some really worthwhile sights and attractions you simply don’t have time to stop and visit along the way? We certainly did during our trip to Andros last spring.
After spending 3 nights in Andros Town at the beginning of our vacation, it was time to move on. Our friends had to return to Athens, and they agreed to drop us off at our next stop — a hotel near the resort area of Batsi, on the northwest coast of Andros — while they drove to Gavrio port to catch their ferry back to the mainland.
So that we could all see a little more of Andros during the drive, we avoided the most direct highway route from Andros Town to Batsi and detoured to the south, following a highway that winds through the island’s Korthi region. The plan was to stop at the fishing harbour and seaside village of Ormos Korthiou to have a coffee before resuming the drive to Batsi.
Click here or on the link under the next photo to turn to page 2 of this post, where you can continue reading about Korthi and view more pictures of some of its top attractions.
One of the iconic sights we didn’t get to see in Korthi was Tis Grias to Pidima beach (also called Old Lady’s Leap), shown in this photo from airbnb.gr. Pictures of the sandy beach and its towering stone pillar can be found on scores of postcards, websites and travel publications for Andros.
Irene’s Villas is a collection of self-catering studio apartments on a hillside above Nimborio beach. We spent 3 nights here in late May.
Hilltop hideaway: First stop on our island-hopping holiday this year was Andros, where we spent three days with friends who, like us, were visiting the island for the first time. They had researched accommodations and shared a short-list of three options they were considering in Andros Town. They ultimately booked at their first choice, Anemomiloi Studios, but by the time I contacted that property, there was no availability in our budget range. So we settled for our second choice, Irene’s Villas, and used their website’s online booking form to reserve a studio.
Exterior view of the front of our apartment at Irene’s Villas. The studio was spotlessly clean, comfortable and quiet.
What we liked the most about our studio was the long sea- and mountain-view veranda out front, where we enjoyed having breakfast and coffee
Please click on the link below to continue reading our review of Irene’s Villas, and to see our photo slideshows of the property and nearby area.
A panoramic view of Fira, the capital and main town on Santorini
Octopus at Amoudi Bay on Santorini
Do you wonder what it’s like visiting Greek islands for the first time? Especially as a solo female traveller?
Two fascinating trip reports by a travel blogger from Vancouver, Canada will give you excellent insight into the entire experience. (They’re also great fun to read even if you have already been to Greece yourself.)
Blogger Christine visited Santorini and Mykonos earlier this month during a two-week holiday — her first-ever trip to Greece. She posted a thorough account of her journey, complete with dozens of photos, on her Christine in Vancouver blog.
I love the reports not just because they show Greece through the eyes of an island-hopping “newbie,” but also since they include scores of food pictures and valuable information about costs and prices — important details that I think will be extremely helpful to others considering a trip to Greece.
Click here to read Christine’s report for her May 6 to 13 stay on Santorini, and click here to read about her May 13 to 19 visit to Mykonos.
The two photos from Santorini posted above, as well as the two photos from Mykonos shown below, are just four of the dozens of fabulous pictures you’ll get to see in Christine’s reports (you’ll be able to view her photos full-size in a slide-show format.)
Enjoy your trip to Santorini and Mykonos with Christine!
Streets in the heart of Mykonos Town
Ornos, one of the top “family” beach resort areas on Mykonos
This summer, guests at Casa del Mar Mykonos Seaside Resort can go to the movies at a private seaside “cinema” on the beach below their villas
Coming soon to a beach near your Greek Island luxury villa — a private seaside cinema?
That’s actually what guests at the Casa del Mar Mykonos Seaside Resort will get to enjoy after dark this summer should they prefer to stay “home” one night rather than travel two miles (4 km) into Mykonos Town to shop, dine, party or people-watch. Merely by walking down a few steps to the resort’s private beach, they’ll be able to curl up on a comfy lounge chair with a glass of wine or bowl of popcorn and watch a film displayed on a wide-screen high-definition panel positioned right on the water’s edge.
A member of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World group of independent hotels, Casa del Mar is an exclusive villa and spa resort at Glyfadi beach, a quiet off-the-beaten-path cove in the Aleomandra area at the southwest tip of Mykonos. The resort website describes Casa del Mar as “an eclectic collection” of nine “luxury sea view suites … grandly appointed with deluxe amenities, quality furnishings and modern conveniences.”
The newest of those “conveniences” was unveiled this week when the Small Luxury Hotels Facebook page posted the two photographs that I have republished in this article. A photo caption read: “There’s nothing wrong with a night in! We think the brand new private beach cinema at SLH’s Casa Del Mar Mykonos might be just the ticket!”
If you’re not able to stay at Casa del Mar while visiting Mykonos this summer, don’t dismay — you can watch a movie outdoors at Cine Manto in Mykonos Town instead (starting May 22). It won’t be the same as watching a film from the comfort of a luxurious sunbed on a sandy beach, of course, but at least it’s in the fresh, open air in a lovely garden setting.
And if you’re travelling somewhere in Greece other than Mykonos, you might be able to attend an outdoor cinema near your destination, too, since there are more than 100 outdoor movie theatres in the country.
I couldn’t find an online directory listing all outdoor cinemas in Greece, but the Athens Info Guide website has a directory of summer cinemas in the city, which you can view by clicking here.
You can read more about the Athens outdoor cinemas on the Greeka.com blog, and on the Visit Greece tourism website.
And for an interesting read about how digital technology is impacting on Greece’s outdoor cinemas, see this August 2014 article from The Guardian newspaper in the U.K.
Another view of the private beach cinema at Casa del Mar Mykonos
Located at Tourlos, just a short walk from the New Port, Cayenne is among dozens of brand-new businesses on Mykonos this year.
[Updated October 30 2015]
“Crisis? What crisis?” That’s a question many regular visitors to Mykonos will probably ask when they see the more than 100 new and completely-renovated businesses that have opened on the island this year.
While Greece shudders through its sixth straight year of devastating economic turbulence, Mykonos appears to be in a different world altogether, virtually unscathed from the recession that has ravaged the rest of the country.
Last year, the island enjoyed a record year for tourism — receiving more than 2 million visitors — and some longtime local residents told me they could not recall ever seeing the island as crowded and busy as it was during July and August. Hotels were filled to capacity, flotillas of luxury yachts were common sights at many beaches, and champagne flowed by the caseload at bars and restaurants across the island. As I reported in a July 16 2014 post, hotel rates reached higher levels, too, with the international online travel firm Trivago noting that prices had soared as much as 61% over the previous year.
[adToAppearHere]
International brands flocking to Mykonos
In anticipation that even more tourists with thick wallets will arrive in 2015, local and international companies have been pouring millions of Euros into the construction of new hotels, shops, bars, clubs and restaurants, as well as the renovation or upgrading of existing properties. Indeed, since late last autumn, Mykonos has been experiencing an unprecedented building boom as small armies of contractors swarmed around the island in a rush to finish dozens of projects. Global business brands flocked to the island in droves, scooping up any available real estate for their new Mykonos outlets.
With many of the new enterprises aimed at affluent travellers, Mykonos mayor Konstantinos Koukas has told local media he’s confident that the island is now well-poised to compete for a bigger share of the the world’s luxury travel market, and will successfully lure big spenders who usually flock to other Mediterranean hotspots like St Tropez, Monaco and Ibiza.
To see what’s new on Mykonos this year, please click on the convenient quick links below:
Click here for page 2 to read about new and newly-renovated restaurants in Mykonos Town, Tourlos, and the Ano Mera area.
Click here for page 3, which describes new and renovated beach restaurants, as well as the island’s two big new beach clubs, Monarch and Scorpios.
Click here for page 4, which highlights new and renovated nightlife venues in Mykonos Town, including bars, nightclubs, and shisha lounges; and
Click here for page 5, which introduces you to the island’s new spas, retail shopping establishments, and hotels.
More than two dozen new restaurants opened on Mykonos for 2015, and five of them can be found under one roof at the Food Mall Mykonos on the highway between Mykonos Town and Ano Mera.
Widely recognized as the hippest new beach club on Mykonos for 2015, the Scorpios Beach Restaurant and Bar became one of the most popular places on the island within weeks of its opening in an “idyllic haven” on a peninsula between Paraga and Platis Gialos.
Another new beach club and restaurant is Monarch at Kalo Livadi, which boasts cuisine designed by a Michelin-starred chef, comfy beachfront lounge chairs, and occasional special events and big parties.
The world’s first Buddha-Bar Beach restaurant, bar and beach club opened on May 20 at the Santa Marina Resort at Ornos.
One of the most eagerly awaited new arrivals on Mykonos was Ling Ling, a Hakkasan-branded Cantonese fine dining restaurant and uber-chic nightspot. It opened in July in the premises that had been occupied for decades by the famous Philippi Garden Restaurant, which closed a few years ago after its owner died.
June 27 saw the launch of yet another new nightclub when Bonbonniere Mykonos threw its opening party in the ODE Mykonos club in the Tria Pigadia area of Mykonos Town. It’s a summer “pop up” version of the world-famous Bonbonniere club in London whose owner, Joe Fournier (wearing the white polo shirt) is pictured after signing a contract to bring Bonbonniere to the ODE space for the season.
Mykonos residents and visitors weren’t just buzzing about new business openings this spring — people were also chatting about the abrupt closure of the enormously popular Caprice Bar (pictured above) and its surprise reopening a few weeks later as Caprice, a restaurant-bar located just a few doors down from its old place at Little Venice.
Mykonos No.5 Villas is one of the island’s newest hotels, offering a selection of seaview apartment residences, lofts and maisonettes in the Kanalia district 3.5 kilometers from Mykonos Town.
