One of the Cyclades Islands

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One of the Cyclades Islands - By: Douglas Scott, Posted on: 2007-12-08

Santorini is the last of the Cyclades islands to the South. The island was also called Kalisti and Strongili and was the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions. What remains today is a submerged volcano and a caldera. The volcano is still active, and the last eruption was in 1950, causing an earth quake that destroyed many villages on the island.

The islands largest export product is soil, 2.000.000 tons a year is exported mainly to make concrete. The Suez channel was built with this concrete.

It is quite expensive you can buy a lot of original stuff hand painted umbrellas, ceramics, jewellery and art. In Santorini you will see many gold jewellery shops, specially in Fira. In Oia narrow streets you will find small or tiny shops with local crafts: jewellery and ceramic.

Santorini is considered to be one of the most night life oriented island of the Cyclades. There is certainly plenty of night life in the beach towns. Fira is probably the most popular place, and here you should not miss having a drink in one of the little cafes.

Eating is a way of life for the Santorinians. One of the traditional Santorinian dishes include the fava dip, a salad with cherry tomatoes with chloro cheese, the santorini cucumber Katsouni and capers, tomatokeftedes, and the round fat baby courgettes grown locally. On the island of Santorini, the predominant grape is Assyrtiko which produces superb dry and dessert Appellation wines. The vines are cultivated in low basket shaped crowns, close to the ground for protection from the strong winds.

Jules Verne made the island famous with its books Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The mysterious island where captain Nemo and his crew watch the volcano eruption.

In the vine yard of Santorini island is a vine yard that it never needs to take the roots out and replant it, that means that the vine trees could be over 150 years old and may be more making this vine yard the oldest in Europe. Some of the wine factories are Butaris, Roussos, Paraskevopoulos, Sigalas and Antoniou.

The ruins of Ancient Thira on a mountain between the beaches at Perissa and Kamari which are best visited in the early morning before the sun has gotten too hot. The terraced ruins that over look the sea date back to the 3rd century BC and the Ptolemies, with also the remnants of Hellenistic and Roman civilization.

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Douglas Scott writes for The Car Hire Specialist. and is a free lance writer for The Santorini Rental Site