Santorini
Nea Kameni
Santorini is shaped like a C, with a small volcanic island--Nea Kameni--in the center; I suspect that this is a shot taken from the patio in front of our hotel room, though, I can't swear to it. We were there toward the end of the tourist season, so there were a lot of cruise ships the first day or two and then it went down to one or two a day.
Nea Kameni
We took a half-day cruise out to Nea Kameni and then to arguably hot underwater springs. (I'd go more for "warmish" than "hot," but whatever.) I have no idea if the ships even had sails onboard, but they certainly didn't use them. Because people keep asking, no, that isn't snow in the background; that's the town of Fira, the largest town on Santorini.
Nea Kameni
All of my Santorini pictures were terribly washed out, so full confession: I pushed the little "I'm feeling lucky!" button in Picasa to correct the brightness and color of this set of pictures. In other words, I can't promise you that the colors were this striking at the time, but they were certainly close. That's Fira in the background again--our hotel was located on the caldera, toward the right edge of the town--and one of the two active volcanic craters on the island in the foreground.
Santorini
We rented a car one day and drove up to the highest point on the island. Santorini does not believe in guard rails. This is... at times alarming.
Red Beach
This is the Red Beach in Akrotiri. We didn't feel the need to swim, so we didn't go all the way, but the scenery was striking at least.
Volcanic rock
What I was standing on when I took the previous pictures. This is all volcanic rock, and is much lighter than it looks. (I must admit I took one red rock and one black one home with me.)
Oia
Ah, the many hotels of Oia. No, the windmill isn't real; it's a hotel room. Pretty, though.
Doggie!
Santorini was absolutely overrun with dogs that... well, they had collars, but my understanding is that they don't really belong to anyone. (In Nafplio it was cats. Cats everywhere.) Because doing the correction to this picture makes the dog disappear, you can see what the shots really looked like beforehand.
The road to Ancient Thera
The second morning that we had the car, we went up to Ancient Thera--which is located, yes, on top of a hill--quite early. This is about a sixth of the road I drove up. This is the paved, non-cobblestone portion. I have never been so glad to not meet oncoming traffic in my life. (We did meet it coming down, but I figured that was the other car's problem.)
Ancient Thera
We actually had considered not going up to Thera. I'd really wanted to see Akrotiri, which is still closed after a roof collapse several years ago, but descriptions of Thera tended to run something like "eh, well, if you're a completist." As it turned out, though, it was very cool. It's a big site, covering the entire top of the hill, and because we were there just as it opened we were almost completely alone up there.
Eyeballs
Souvenirs. These were everywhere. At first I thought they were weird, but by the end of the trip they'd broken me. Big eyeballs! Little eyeballs! Eyeball keychains! Eyeball fish! Eyeball birds! Eyeball crosses! (I referred to this as "His Eyeball Is On The Sparrow" and cracked myself up, because I was punchy.) Eventually I had to buy one, so now I have an eyeball at work. It watches me, and I expect it to turn into a Beholder at any moment.