Originally posted on Medium...
It took a few connections to get from Kayseri, in the middle of Turkey, to the island of Santorini, so we had time to do a little reading about where we were going.
Oia is at the very top
Santorini as we see it today is basically the aftermath of a collapsed volcano that erupted with great force [7] about 3500 years ago, possibly ending a civilization 45 miles to the south in Crete, but also creating some very cool geographic features that we get to enjoy today. The island has high, steep cliffs that sharply drop into the Aegean Sea, and the middle of the volcano structure can still be seen popping out of the ocean from the remaining eastern semi-circle where all the people live. We booked a spot at the top of the crescent shape in a town called Oia, pronounced EEE-a. The nicest hotels were built on the inward facing cliffs with dug-out caves for rooms, which have amazing views, but all the beaches are on the backside of the island that gently slopes into the sea. At some point the government had mandated that all the houses need to be white, and the resulting contrast with the blue church domes made the spot great to photograph.
[7] this was one of the largest volcanic events that we know of, ejecting 23 cubic miles of earth.
We arrived in Oia to find it absolutely packed. It seemed to us that all the tourists from Turkey had just shifted their target southwest, and landed in Greece instead! [8]
[8] one of our cab drivers in Turkey had told us that all the Russians that normally visit were in Greece now, due to Russia cancelling travel visas to Turkey after the fighter plane incident.
And all of them were taking pictures. All the time. Everywhere.
There were people taking pictures from this railing all day, every day
This was by far the #1 activity to do, and we were constantly ducking, dodging, going around, or bumping into people taking pictures of the view, and yes, taking selfies.