May 13, 2025

May 13, 2025

We awoke in Oia on the island of Santorini to a beautiful sunny day. Yeah. Aimee is ecstatic that the earthquake swarm of two months ago seems to be long gone. Otherwise our room precariously perched on the edge of a soft volcanic dirt cliff might slip into the water some 500 feet below us.

The hotel staff delivered us a gourmet breakfast of fruit and granola plus an Algerian specialty dish called Shakshuka. It was a soft fried egg with tomatoes and peppers. After breakfast we walked into town looking for photo opportunities with the morning sun. I was mostly stymied by tourists lined up trying to get the same shot. I will have to try again tomorrow before breakfast.

At the Oia bus stop we caught a cab to Fira. There we walked north along the caldera rim. It is a beautiful sight to behold. Unfortunately these days, beautiful scenery draws a horde of people. When I first visited 41 years ago, Santorini was more of a geologic curiosity. It was inexpensive with modest tourism. Today it is a social media superstar driving a significant share of Greece’s tourism economy. Newly built resorts line much of the circumference.

I was flabbergasted by the number of young girls we passed posing in impossibly long flowing dresses, many with professional photographers. All this time and money just to post a photo that makes your friends jealous. No doubt Envy drives the world.

To get away from the crowd we kept on with our caldera walk from one town to another. They have almost all merged now into one. I stop and take lots of photos. There is an extraordinary number of small churches along the route. In Imerovigli we stop and have lunch. We had another great salad and tomato fritters. The waiter tempted us with a dessert of Baklava, a classic Greek pastry oozing with honey. It was better than I remember.

The rest of the six-mile hike back to Oia was less built up. It was interesting to see the natural terrain, filled with different types of volcanic material from tuff to basalt to cinders. By the time we made it back to Oia my feet were burning. I was more than ready to relax on our veranda.