Santorini Bests: Winery / Beach / Caldera Sunset Cruise

We spent 4 nights in Santorini last September. We took a day tour to several areas that are on your list. We visited the popular Santo Winery. Beautiful location to spend an hour or more to tour, taste and enjoy the view. We spent a couple hours at Kamari Beach (Black Beach). We stayed at Restaurant Forty One. They have wonderful sun loungers with coverage to relax, have lunch, & take a dip in the water. They also have convienent changing stalls. We also made a brief stop at beautiful Red Beach. These locations are about 20 min. from Oia.

Helpful resources for Santorini: santorinidave.com, & Matt Barrett website.

Santo is a little more commercial, while Venetsanos is a bit quieter and more rustic. Both are beautiful! I loved our boat cruise with Barbarossa Sailing for 125 euro. Our hotel arranged it, but it included transport to/from our Oia hotel down to Ammoudi Bay. Here are tips on best places to see the sunset and booking a sunset reservation.

While not a winery any more the Wine Museum Koutsogiannopoulos is an excellent place to discover the history of wine making in Santoirini. The winery is closed now and they use the wine cellar tunnel and an audio system to tell their story. After the tour there is a wine tasting of 5 different wines included in the price. I don't recall the cost it was about 14 or 19 euros. very inexpensive.
Here are images of the tour and tasting.Hit the right arrow on the side of the image and it will take you to another 20 or so images.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stanbr54/38305451192/in/album-72157689937827955/

1. We ended up not getting to a winery, mainly because we were so discouraged by the difficulty of getting from any point A to any point B in Santorini that we decided to stick pretty close to Oia. Transportation in Santorini sucks. We drove and it was horrible: one way streets and dead ends with no signs, narrow roads, bumper to bumper congestion and buses coming the opposite way at full speed for whom the centre line was a mere nuisance. We saw that buses were a poor option too as they were packed to standing room and leaving several who could not get on. We heard that taxis were rare and hard to get. And this was in May with no more than two cruise ships in port (imagine August with up to 6 ships).

2. We took a water taxi from Akrotiri to Red, White and Black beaches, intending to get off where it looked nice, but it started to rain. Our best swimming experience in Santorini (and frankly one of the best ever) was from the rocks at Ammoudi.

3. Our hotel booked us on the Thalassa for a sunset dinner cruise and it was fantastic. For EUR 80 they picked us up and drove us to Athinios, went to the volcano for a walking tour, anchored at the hot springs and at Thirasia for swimming, fed us a fantastic spread of souvlaki, salad, dolmathes, tzatziki, olives and other delicacies, then hauled up the sails to watch sunset from beneath Oia.

Darren: I just want to thank you for all the follow up you've provided on your threads! This will be very helpful for others - it's great that you took the time to do this.

I second Harold! We are leaving for Greece in 3 weeks and your follow-ups have been helpful

Red Beach is extremely dangerous due to falling rocks. It is posted with a warning but people ignore it and spend time down there anyway. Recently an earthquake tremor dislodged some large rocks which fell down the cliff to the beach below. Fortunately there was no one on the beach at the time. Someday someone's going to be killed. DON'T GO DOWN THERE! Perissa Beach is quite mellow, especially at the Perivolos end, which is in the opposite direction from the mountain. With a car you can also continue around to Vlichada Beach, which is black gravel and very nice. Regarding your intention to rent a car, be sure to bring an International Driving Permit from your local AAA office, no test or membership required.