My main objective while painting the island of Santorini, was to capture the island’s unique quality of light. By focusing on the shapes of shadows, I made use of the white of the page and defined the composition with washes of color. If I had used black lines to describe the buildings, I would have lost Santorini’s uniqueness.
Seeing Fira from the top of the caldera, and looking down at the Aegean far below, is an even more powerful experience than was looking up at it from the ferry. Most of the small city streets are free of cars and barely wide enough to handle two-way pedestrian traffic. My favorite street, which is narrow enough to be called a path, traces along the edge of the caldera for several kilometers. Homes, restaurants, and hotels line this street, and all have extraordinary views. Fira’s white buildings, brightly painted doors, and overflowing baskets of flowers make this a unique place.
I spent a day walking through the streets of Fira along twisting, winding paths, up and down steps. There wasn’t a corner I turned that wasn’t worth sketching.
Fira’s white buildings, brightly painted doors, and overflowing baskets of flowers make Santorini a unique place to sketch and paint.
Map of the Greek Cyclade Islands showing the route we took to Santorini, Mykonos, and Delos.
We exit the cab at the port town of Paraeus, grab out bags, and walk over to the ferry. Its still too dark to see the Aegean, but I can smell fresh fish and seawater. As we enter the ferry and queue up to hand over our tickets, the enormous steel structure brings back childhood memories of a carnival ride. We carry our bags up the steps and search for a seat. The boat is crowded, but eventually we find a place near Goody’s, the Greek version of a fast food restaurant. Thankfully, no smoking is allowed inside the boat–a big plus. We park ourselves in the seats, our luggage close at hand. But the atmosphere in here feels stale and the lack of windows, claustrophobic. Even though smoking is allowed on the decks, I’m willing to put up with it for open space and a view. We grab our bags and climb stairs to the upper deck. At the front of the boat we discover, to our satisfaction, many seats available and few smokers. A gentle sea breeze provides fresh air and keeps the lingering smoke at bay. Early morning light illuminates tiny islands with low, fog-like clouds as we ferry out into the Aegean. To pass time, we pull out a map and guess the names of the islands as they come into view. Most appear uninhabited, barren, with just the occasional touch of green.
After many hours at sea, with two quick stops along the way, my excitement builds as Santorini comes into view. Passengers with cameras gather in anticipation on the port side of the ferry. We also ready our cameras and find a good spot along the railing. At first, Santorini looks like many other shallow islands we’ve seen pushing up from the sea. But when we get closer, I see a mountain looming large on the far side. Where the land meets the sea, sharp cliffs rise up a thousand feet into the blue sky. This is the caldera, where the central part of the volcano broke off and collapsed into the Aegean. Striations of colored rock, stone, sediment, and lava make the island a lopsided layer cake. As we ferry closer, the white city of Oia covers the top like frosting. The city contains no storied buildings and gathers close to the earth to avoid slipping off the caldera.
As we sail into the center of the five volcanic islands that make up Santorini, the top of the caldera rises above us. Quarter-moon shaped Thera is the largest of the islands. The city of Fira comes into view and I’m amazed that it’s so high up. The famous switchback trail, which takes travelers by donkey to and from the port below, is visible snaking along the cliff.
I’m glad we’ve finally arrived. I feel as though I’ve been out at sea a week. The ferry spins around, as it did in Naxos, and backs into to the port. We dock at Athinios and stand on the aft deck watching the gangway lower. During the boat ride, we scoured our travel guides for lodging and chose four possibilities. Pension Petros is the most promising, but we’ll be satisfied just to have a roof over our heads tonight. We certainly don’t want a repeat of our problems upon our arrival in Athens.
Our guidebooks say it’s possible to take the donkey caravan up the switchbacks to the top, but we don’t think much of that idea. Many proprietors are at the dock holding up handwritten signs for their hotels and pensions. We look for anything referencing Pension Petros, and finally see a middle-aged man holding up a sign for the place. He is, in fact, Mr. Petros himself. We get into his van, and he drives us up the switchbacks along the side of the caldera to Fira and Pension Petros. Along the way, I notice how Santorini, with its white buildings and blue-domed churches, differs from Attica.
When we arrive at the pension, Ms. Petros greets us from the reception desk. Behind her, I notice gracefully painted murals throughout the hotel lobby and around the spa. I recognize most of them as reproductions of the Akrotiri wall paintings. Their daughter shows us to our room. Running this pension is a real family affair. She tells us that Internet WiFi is included in the price and provides the password. Through the guide books, we had heard WiFi was ubiquitous in Greece, but that has not been our experience in the inexpensive hotels. She also informs us that for a few euros more, we can have a larger, quieter room with views, in the rear of the hotel.
We follow our host up the steps at the far end of the pension and across the private terrace of the new room. A partial view of the island, complete with a blue domed church and the sea just beyond, is visible from up here. Opening the door, tiled floors welcome us inside. Stepping around a small single bed near the door, I see a spacious, full poster bed sitting along the opposite wall. I call dibs on the poster bed. Just beyond it, on the far wall, a shuttered window opens up to a partial view of the countryside. This room is more than we bargained for and well worth the extra euros. Now settled in the best room we’ve had yet, I can relax. Greece has real old-world charm, and I feel that we will be well cared for by a Greek family.
I was amazed at how many people were actually visiting the Acropolis in October. So many in fact that it was hard to find a good place to paint. This situation was intimidating and kept me from drawing on my first day in Greece. This sketch is of the Sanctuary of Asclepius which is one of many ruins along the path up the Acropolis and a place fewer people tended to congregate.