Santorini - 2022

 

Santorini has changed a lot since I first visited it fifty-four years ago.  It is now one of the most glamorous and visited islands on planet earth.

The views of the Caldera from the patios of elegant hotels is stunning.

The 3-hour trek between Fira and Oia presents a most beautiful scenery.

Santorini has become the place where young persons from far away places such as the United States or China elect to give vows of everlasting love and devotion. 

On this visit I stayed in the lovely hotel Phaos, which patio overlooks the the islands of Anafi and Astypalea in the Aegean Sea.

As in my first visit in 1968, I visited once more Akrotiri the Bronze Age settlement, one of the most important Minoan urban centres in the Aegean Sea, when it was covered by ash following the volcanic eruption in the 17 century BC.  The ancient Minoan town at Santorini's south coast, is called the "Pompeii of Greece" and some archeologists theorise that it is the fictional island of Atlantis that was created by demi-gods who established a utopian society as described by Greek philosopher Plato. 

I am finishing the trilogy on Santorini with the lighthouse in its southern tip, likely the oldest in Greece, as it was built in 1892.  It was the purpose of my first visit to service it and my role as a young Navy physician to check the health status of its crew.  The view was beautiful then, like it is now, thus a large number of visitors keep coming in the evenings to look at the sun setting.  Each of my trips to Santorini left me with beautiful and indelible memories which I will cherish the rest of my life. 

Santorini - 1988

 
I returned to Santorini 20 years after my first visit.  At that time the construction had begun in earnest.  On the left you can see the spire and dome of the Catholic Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist and on the right, the Candlemas Orthodox Cathedral was under reconstruction.

Before my trip to Santorini, we baptised my firstborn son on April 23, the feast day of Saint George, in the little chapel on mount Lycabetus in Athens.  A rare storm had blown by earlier resulting in a crystal clear Spring day with deep blue skies, we thus had a beautiful view of Athens and its nearby islands.

In the evening of our arrival in Santorini, I went out for a walk in the little town of Fira.  It was cold and windy as on my first visit 20 years before. It was after sunset, a light rain had started and I was walking alone.  At one point another person was walking the opposite direction towards me. He was wearing a black raincoat and a hat with a wide flat rim similar to the one of Don Quixote.  He was the Monseigneur of the Catholic Cathedral which was originally built in 1823 and restored in 1970.  The picture above is how the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist looks today.