What is buzzing? Still owned and run by the family that created it, the newly renovated and resumed canaves and resumed ENA celebrates its 40th anniversary this summer. This makes it one of the oldest properties in OIA, the village of Cliffftop containing in a million postcards, thanks to its whitewashed villas, blue cups and sun views on the volcano of the Santorini.
“It’s not a matter of surprise that little, if any, good descriptions have been written,” Lawrence Durrell notes on his 1978 journey Greek islands. “The reality is as surprising as prose and poetry, however winged, will be permanently forced to lame behind. Sunsets and sunrise here are placed by poets from work.”
The village – which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1956 and rebuilt with tourism in mind in the 1980s – may be unknown by the ghost settlement, destroyed Durrell visited, a place that barely 300 people then called home. But look at the sea, and his descriptions still sound true.
What about the latest earthquakes? Starting in January, more than a thousand earthquakes hit the area, reaching a size of 5.3 on February 10. Until March, however, seismic activity was extinguished, the emergency state imposed on February 6 was raised, and on March 4 the island’s schools reopened. However, some hotels have reported that the numbers of visitors have decreased this spring.
Isn’t this good thing? Perhaps in fact, concerns about the overestimation and effect of navigation vessel visits have made the island chairman Nikos Zorzos launch a daily lid on the number of passengers. This year a maximum of 8,000 will be allowed to be lit in its port, Drive 23 km south of OIA – less than half of the number of arrivals in a few days last year.
Even so, you may want to avoid the Venetian castle of the village in the sunset and stay low when there is a boat inside.
Checking in You enter a flight of shallow steps from the main road to the village. Get down beyond the old wind mill, in which the family lived (now suite 16, a superior with twin terraces and a pool of diving and the most beloved option, I thought), through a port of arched stone, and you find yourself in a cold area of waiting, where cold water is reinforced and forms forms. Pay attention while you are led in your room. The layout is labyrinth, there is no map, and the rooms are counted not sequentially, but when they were added to the inventory. So mine, number 4, was one of the first, and the number 18 is younger.
In the early 1980s, Yiannis and Anna Chaidemenos inherited the mill and a couple of KanvenaThe barrels with barrels excavated on the rocks in the 17th and 18th centuries, where wines were made and preserved by the unique indigenous grapes of the Assirtic Island.
“No one was doing anything with them,” says their son, Markos, now managing director. “So my parents decided to make them in a holiday home,” which over time was taken to a hotel. While neighboring buildings became available, they won them and the hotel grew. Now is the flag of Canaves, a group that includes four hotels, some villas and an excellent coastal fish restaurant, Armenia, in a cow accessible only by boat.
How was the room? With their bleached walls, curved ceilings and traditional grates, the interior aesthetics are broken-decorative objects are the boxes and ceramic dishes made by a local fifth generation andreas macaris. (He finds inspiration on the 3,500-year-old Minoan vessels excavated in Akrotiri, south of the island, and now at the exhibition at the excellent prehistoric museum in the island’s capital, Firá.) All have terraces that appear with herbs and flowering species, locals and all over.
And food? The restaurant, Adam, has a delicious, fundamentally Greek peasant menu, some known, others less, meticulously prepared by Margarita Nikolaidi, winner of the 2021 season of Cape Greece. There is an emphasis on increased products in the country. Small, strong, strong tomatoes of Santorini, for example, are so honored that there is an entire museum dedicated to them near the airport. And its fava, separated dried beans, cooked in a rough puree and aroma with olive oil and capers, have the protected EU determination for origin status.
Aromatic mavromatics (black -eyed peas) with spinach, chervil and grilled calamar were so good that I took the recipe home.
What is there to do? There is a small swimming pool, the first to excavate Oia, but no bath or gym, although its sister hotel, Canaves Oia Suites, a five-minute walk away, has both, just like the Epitoma Canaves, just below the village, to which the hotel runs a ship. Dressier, more of a resort and, with 53 rooms, much larger, looks directly across the sea to the sunset from luxury gardens.
Also owned by the Chaidemenos family, the Sunset OIA yacht company offers Caldera Catamaran cruises (private or common; from € 79 to five hours, including food and wine). From the water you get a sense of the extraordinary geology of the island – Durrell compared the stripped colors of its rocks with “Marbling oil at the bottoms of Victorian Ledgers” – and its red, ocher and black beaches, not to mention a chance to wash in the warm, if they are a little sulfurous.
If you have enjoyed the wines made by asyrtiko, it is worth visiting the Domaine Sigalas wine, 2 km from the hotel, both to enjoy the premium whites that make (among them a sweet sweet vinsanto) and to see the vineyards, which grow with the shameless, stricter, steep, stricter. Strong smell.
Other guests Sunnaments of all ages from at least three continents, mainly in pale diaphrase. But no family (under 13 years old is allowed). All stairs would make it a challenge for anyone who has damaged mobility.
DAMAGE From 454 € including breakfast, although rates rise at the peak of summer.
Claire Wrathall was a guest of Canaves ena (Canaves.com))
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