(Bruce wrote this blog entry just before we went to see the sunset last Saturday early evening. Thought you all would want to read it.)
To understand our days here, it is necessary to live the geography, which, if you took a cross section of the island would look like steps leading up to a rampart that's the remains of where the top of the mountain blew off. And since Santorini was settled before bulldozers were invented, the human surface of Santorini conforms to this stepped topography. So, to get ANYWHERE, one follows the land. Up steps. Down steps. Up a few more steps. Through a short passage between shops and homes and churches that cover every square inch of three-fourths of the island.
it is amazing. It is beautiful. Our calf muscles have never been so strong! And then there's the wind. A wind in a cloudless, blue-blue sky, the way it was invented - sky that has blown steady from the northeast at 20 to 40 mph. It sends into the Mediterranean. It covers everything with fine grit. But it keeps it cool so even with the sun and the steps it is pleasant.
Somehow it just makes you sing.
Today, Maryann fixed us breakfast, then we stepped up to the rin, did some shopping, stepped up and down along the rim to the old fort that makes the northwest corner of the island. Then stepped to a massage spa to arrange treatments for tomorrow because each of us is having different (& minor) muscle problems.
Then Tomie and I stepped home to use the pool and sunbathe while Maryann stepped along to do some more browsing.
Oh, forgot, we had a very good lunch at a rim restaurant looking out onto the caldera and watching someone wind surf. Whoever it was, must have been world class to back and forth across the bay in 30 mph wind and 5 foot waves!
Now we are pulling ourselves together to see a Santorini sunset -- something for which the island is famous. Hope everyone who reads/sees this can connect with the beauty and peace of this ancient and wondrous place.
