In the Aegean Sea off the coast of Greece there lies a partially submerged volcano called Santorini. The main town of Thira (or Fira or Thera depending on who you ask) is built on the rim of the volcano’s caldera, which plunges steeply into the sea. The buildings are all painted white in typical Greek Island style and blue church domes add contrast to the cityscape. Almost every café, restaurant and hotel has a sea view taking in either the dramatic caldera edge or the gently sloping eastern side of the island.
Our hotel had a fantastic view of the eastern side of the island with the white and blue buildings giving way to barren earth and scraggly grape vines as the island slopes down into the sea. From our rooftop balcony, even from our room window, we had a prime view of the sunrise over the sea and even saw some volcanic activity on a nearby island.
The weather was very hot and beautifully sunny the whole time we were there. We had a few dips in our hotel pool and also made trips to beaches - Black Sands Beach and Red Sands Beach - both appropriately named. Theresa swam out to a rock at Red Sands Beach and did her best mermaid impersonation.
As usual, we enjoyed a lot of good food including more mousaka, a variety of grilled meats and a couple of excellent Greek Salads. We ran out of money the second day we were there and found out that all the ATMs on the island had done the same. We were advised it was a bank holiday so nobody would be restocking the machines until the next day. Luckily we had enough money to get some supermarket food and we had a couple of nice home-prepared meals on our balcony.
Santorini is home to a lot of semi-stray cats and dogs. The council apparently encourages them by putting food out and, in Athens we were told the council gives all the dogs shots. Santorini had mostly cats, unlike Athens which had packs of wild dogs just hanging around looking intimidating. Theresa took lots of cat photos!
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