Megalochori, Santorini Twenty-four hours after we left our apartment in New York, we pulled up to the front gate of the Vedema Hotel in Megalochori, Santorini. It was about 8:30 in the evening local time, and just dark. The gate and grounds were softly lit and quiet. Our bags were spirited away, we were given champagne and checked in, and we were shown to our villa. After room service came to take our order and brought us our dinner, we managed to sleep through the night.

Megalochori is one of the small villages on the high plain under Mount Profitias Elias in the southern part of Santorini. The town is a series of interlocking buildings with streets like hallways and houses and yards like rooms. Everytime we drove down the street that ran through town, everyone on the road had to go inside. And even though the town couldn't have had more than a few hundred residents, there were at least three Orthodox churches.

The Vedema Hotel is actually, given the size of the town, a sprawling property, with twenty or so villas, two restaurants, a pool, and gardens. It is built on the grounds of a former winery, and is surrounded on one side by the town, and on the other by vineyards.

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Greece 1996

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