Some places disappoint you, others exceed your expectations. Santorini went right off the scale. Calm, clean, sparkling. Everything the postcards and travel shows say, and more.

Calm, we think, was just good luck. We were the only cruise ship visiting today. Sometimes there are 4 or 5 of those floating cities. Maybe 20K passengers coming ashore. We numbered just over 900. You tender ashore and the local tender boats are mandatory. Ours seemed to take forever to arrive, load and depart. Imagine if they were coping with 5x as many trips. We travelled from the port on our tour bus but returned using a cable car. They take around 36 passengers at a time. We were told how bad the queues often are. We waited maybe 5 minutes.

Tourism is Santorini’s industry. There are 15,000 residents and 3,000,000 tourists per year: a ratio of 200:1. Other weird facts. None of the streets have names. None of the houses have names or numbers. Postal workers arrive in a village at a given time and shout out the name of the person. Amazon (etc) won’t serve Santorini because no one has an address. There is no natural water on Santorini. It has a desalination plant and water is delivered to properties by tanker. There are no traffic lights anywhere. The island was created by a volcanic eruption 3600 years ago, believed to be the most powerful eruption ever on Earth. The volcano is still active (although a lot smaller) but is constantly monitored by seismologists.

Apart from all that, it’s a charming place to stroll the streets of its towns. Most places are uphill from the coach parking, and the routes can be narrow and winding. We had a few “traffic jams” of people (again, thankfully just our ship in port). 

Of course, most tours’ success is very dependant on the guide. We had one of the best ever. An Italian lady from Torino, who’d moved here about 25 years ago. Perfect English and a subtle sense of humour. Escorted us to central points of interest, a quick orientation and let us get on with it.

A fantastic day enjoying warm sun, spectacular scenery and gentle sea breezes without even the slightest hint of pollution.