Iconic Santorini

I suspect that, like me, you have seen the photographs of Santorini, the Greek island that is almost always represented by white buildings with blue domes.  Getting to see Santorini in person was one of the anticipated highlights of my cruise around the Aegean Sea.  It turns out that those two iconic white buildings with the blue domes are not representative of the town that is perched on a rocky cliff high above the sea.  

Here is a view of the town of Fira, the largest city and the capital of Santorini, at sunrise.  I took this photo from our ship, the Viking Venus.



Santorini is a volcanic island--actually five islands—with the towns built in the calderas left by previous eruptions.  

We began our exploration of the island with a motorized sailboat trip to the uninhabited island of Nea Kameni which most recently blew in 1955.  




We hiked up the lava-strewn mountain to the caldera—the depression formed when a volcano blows its top and then sinks in.  The views from the top of the island were lovely.  





We sailed around some of the other islands that make up Santorini and then visited Fira.  I chose to access Fira via a cable car ride, but Scott decided to walk up the nearly 600 steps from the port to the town.  In this photo, the cable car line goes up the hill on the left while the walking path zigzags up the mountain. 




We had time to wander around the narrow streets and up and down multiple flights of stairs with hundreds of other tourists.  I am glad we made this trip in November rather than in the summer, when we are told, there can be as many as 42,000 tourists a day in town and up to eight cruise ships anchored around the bay.  

Fortunately, on the day of our visit, only one other ship was in port—the Norwegian Epic, a massive ship that can house four thousand passengers.  Perhaps this woman, in line in front of me for the cable car ride down, was one of them.  If you go to visit Santorini, expect hordes of others to be there creating long lines everywhere.   


By the way, I did not find the iconic churches with the blue domes; somehow it didn’t seem important to take a photo of them when so many already exist.   But I did photograph this building at the bottom of the cliff, which I think captures the spirit of the place equally well. 

Comments

  1. MagdaNovember 18, 2021 at 3:25 PM

    Did you make it to Akrotiri? That's the archaeological site of the city covered by the ashes of the volcano eruption centuries ago.

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    Replies
    1. ElizabethNovember 18, 2021 at 11:22 PM

      We did not go to Akrotiri. I saw an extensive exhibit at the National Archeological Museum in Athens about the dig and some of the relics and wall paintings taken from there. We decided that hiking a volcano would be a different experience. The downside of sailing on a cruise to many places is that you are only in each place for a few hours.

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