Day 233 - Port

Thought of the day: Today we walked down to the port and had lunch at a popular tavern called Ammoudi. We met the restaurant's owner, a friendly Canadian woman who came here for vacation 23 years ago and never left. After settling down on the island, she fell in love with a cook called Dimitris. They got married and opened the restaurant together. Judging from their reputation and the size of the lunch crowd, they must be doing just fine. The owners of another local favorite, Atlantis Bookstore, are an American and a British who came as tourists 9 years ago and decided to open a multilingual used-book store for tourists. They have a good, tasty collection of English books and the bookstore feels more like a cozy college library than your normal run-of-the-mill bookstore. On a pedestrian street filled with glittering, colorful souvenir shops, this bookstore was a rare find. I spent a good hour there this afternoon browsing the books and took home a few with me. Oia is primarily a tourist town but the tourists are not merely the source of income here, they contribute to the local culture as well, as amply demonstrated by the owners of Ammoudi and Atlantis.

Photo of the day:

The village of Oia is built on top of the cliff.  At the bottom, it's the port which is accessible by a path with a lot of steps and a paved road for cars and tour buses.  We walked, of course.  It was fun to walk and the view was spectacular along the way.