las! So, we meet again. In my last photo essay, I showed you Roma, my Roma, with Baroque Basilicas and romantic crumbling columns; this time I will show you Greece. It is the Greece of April, before the tourists flood the narrow streets and buy all the plaster figurines of Zeus atop Mount Olympus. My first visit to these islands began with a 27 hour ferry-ride from the heel of Italy to the nose of Greece. Someone once told me that the proper way to arrive in Greece was by sea, like Odysseus (or Ulysses for we Romans), and never, never by plane. Being the impressionable type that I am, I jumped at this idea, managing to convince my skeptical travel-mates in the process of the all-round correctness of such an approach. Depending on our ever-changing opinion of the "time is money" equation, we spent a lot of it on trains and boats, aware that we were seeing stuff we wouldn't otherwise, while silently lamenting our lost beach-time. In fact, not too long after, huge fires razed much of the pleasant scenery at which we stared on the way from Patras to Athens.

Athens was grey, wet, and dirty. We stayed just long enough to find out that the falafel is as Greek as the Big Mac, to pay homage to the Parthenon's Doric columns, and to generally ponder the wonderful way the Greeks had of hellenizing. And who, if not Stuart and Revett, can truly comprehend the pure magnificence and the permanence of the Parthenon- even on a rainy day...

Santorini, our final destination, is a very popular Greek island. I, like any other American billboard reader, recognized it immediately; it appeared as another Parliament cigarette ad -- in 3-D, with white-washed facades and crisp blue backdrops. Take a look for yourself...

At night the sunset surrounded this really beautiful little island and the water glistened like ice. And, being only April, indeed without the sun, the night air did feel quite a bit like ice.

The night and the night life may be the second reason "backpackers" make a stop here. The first reason may be its incredible beauty. Or, in the most satirical eyes of my travel companion from Colorado, "its appropriation of frat-bar values; the slow songs are played in perfect proportion to one's level of drunkenness, and everyone's 'favorite song' seems to come on at the same time."

He also adds, "much more interesting, however, is the ubiquity of all things blue..."

The rich blue of the sky, the glassy, aqua-blue of the sea, and the waving blue of the Greek flag that, for example, hung aloft the boat on our way to a tiny, volcanic island just off Santorini's coast. From the rocky sparseness of that island, we looked upon its creation. A long, long time ago Santorini was formed when a volcano erupted, which explains why the island is essentially a big, snaking cliff. Santorini, from this vant t, seemed to be covered with clunky snow, though in reality the whiteness is the result of a uniform housing plan. In this next picture, I am back on the island of Santorini in an area called Thira. Behind us you can see these clumped houses more closely.

Hey, can you guess which girl is me ?

Well, to keep you, the curious reader, in suspense, I'll show you a quick-shot of the flora of Santorini. "A flower is a flower is a flower is a..."

And now an example of the fauna of Santorini captured in a darling snapshot of "a donkey and a boy" - the same boy who commented above about the appropriation of the American Frat-bar scene in Santorini. This photograph was taken during a special day we spent together doing "touristy" things -- Smile!

Before they built roads, these donkeys constituted public transportation from the dock to the towns. These days, people ride them for fun, because they don't want to walk -- and of course to look cute in pictures. Like me...

Until next our next Photo Journey...

Ciao!

© Trincoll Journal, 1995.