Santorini: The Jewel of the Greek Islands

Yesterday afternoon at 4 p.m., my friends and I returned home from our 11 day trip to Turkey and Greece. This trip, without a doubt, was one of the most memorable—and definitely the most physically challenging in my lifetime. Our day of return began at 2:15 a.m. when we flew from Athens to Paris, and Paris to Los Angeles--16 hours on a plane. I slept for 13 hours straight after returning as our days began early in the morning and there was lots of hiking and climbing through famous sites and ruins. There was little time for reflection except for brief journal jottings and souvenirs which I'll later make into a scrapbook. Over the weeks to come, I’ll post some photos from the 400 plus I downloaded into my computer, but right now I’m still unpacking, organizing and debriefing, when I’m not cat napping.

We followed the footsteps of St. Paul in the Book of Acts beginning with Istanbul and ending in Athens, Greece. Every day was memorable, but probably the most startlingly beautiful place we visited was the Greek island Santorini, which was not on Paul's itinerary, I'm sure, but it was on the itinerary of our cruise ship.

This photo was taken after we had taken the finicular up the side of the mountain and were waiting for sunset.

And this photo was taken from the island as the sun set over the Agean sea and that's our cruise ship waiting for our return. There are no docks at Santorini so tenders take the tourists via tender boats.

According to Wikipedia, Santorini is a small, circular archipelago of volcanic islands located in the southern Aegean Sea, about 200 km south-east from Greece's mainland. It is also known as Thera forming the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately 73 km (28 mi) and a 2001 census population of 13,670. It is comprised of the Municipality of Thera (pop. 12,440) and the Community of Oía, pop. 1,230, which includes 268 inhabitants who are actually on the offshore island of Therasia, lying to the west. They have a total land area of 90.623 km which also includes the uninhabited islands of Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, Aspronisi, and Christiani, all part of the Municipality of Thira. Legend has it that one of the island’s pieces sunk into the sea after a volcanic eruption and became what we now know as Atlantis.

If you want to find out more about this beautiful and quaint island, go to the Santorini website, or follow the island on its webcam called the Caldera.

As I dozed again this afternoon, it was Santorini that wove itself through my fitful dreams as my body attempts to heal itself from travel.