Hubby was certainly fascinated by the geological aspects of the Santorini eruption, and certainly the signs of a massive eruption was all around, if you know what to look for. To begin with, the soil on the island was all made of volcanic ash. In fact the ash layer was perhaps 50 metres thick. You can see it in this quarry. All those layers under the buildings are all ash.

The volcano before the eruption must have been very big. Hubby says it would have looked like any other volcano cone, perhaps like the shape of Mount Fuji, but bigger. You can get a taste of the scale of the volcano from various high points on the island.

We could see the shape of the caldera clearly curve around from the village of Pyrgos, which we will visit later.

Whichever way you look at the island, Santorini is certainly impressive.

We’ve finally made it to our final destination, in Greece at least – the island of Santorini. Santorini is what Greek holiday dreams are made of – stunning location, generally good weather, and large selection of accommodation and activities. That also meant that there was bound to be crowds all year round. We certainly weren’t sure of what we would find in April, but we were pleasantly surprised.

Our hotel was a pretty plush affair, and postcard-perfect, if it wasn’t for the 30km/h winds and mid-teen temperatures that greeted our arrival.

We didn’t have a ‘caldera view’ despite the plushness, but a quick walk across the road remedied that.

Santorini is of course the main island of what was once the rim of a super volcano. The volcano infamously imploded upon itself around 4000 years ago, wiping out the Minoan civilisation, and creating the caldera (a flooded volcano) that we see today. Since then a mini volcano has started growing in the middle, so Santorini isn’t quite dormant yet. An active volcano doesn’t seem to put off the cruise ships – it’s the favourite destination of many Mediterranean cruises.

The towns on the island are mainly perched high upon the rim. We stayed near the main town of Fira where the houses were built staggered down the cliff-side. That made for a lot of stair-walking.

We’ll be exploring the town and its surrounds in the next few posts.