Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Santorini Coastline

Before I get back to the business of posting more cat-centric images in this blog, I thought you might like to see a litttle bit more of the western coastline of the Greek island of Santorini.

Here's a view looking to the northwest, taken from our hotel room balcony. This image shows the central portion of Santorini's main town of Fira. The diagonal 'switchback' path in the lower center is used by hard-working donkeys (and people on foot) to reach the small lower port area (out of view to bottom left). There's a short cable-car ride that accomplishes the same thing a lot faster, and without all the donkey-infused ambience and sweaty exertion.




This second shot is from the north side of town, looking south. Visible in the background just to the right of the church is the southernmost part of Fira, home to our hotel - the Hotel Keti.


I have several more good landscape images from Santorini, but will save those for a little later. Back to the cats soon.

Monday, April 20, 2009

On Santorini - One Room, Great View, Free Greek Cat Included




Question: What's better than a nice room with a great view on the Greek island of Santorini?

Answer: A nice room with a great view, and a free (hotel) cat for a few days.

Here's a shot that shows a little more of the Santorini town of Fira in the background, as seen from the balcony of our room (looking approximately northward). Our favorite 'hotel cat' has stopped by for a proper dose of head-scratching attention. Naturally, my wife was more than happy to oblige. No language barriers here!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

On Santorini - A Room with a Great View


This image illustrates a bit of the scale associated with the Greek island of Santorini. My wife is looking over the edge of our hotel balcony at the Hotel Keti, with the main port village of Fira built into the rocky hillside in the backdrop. The water and the volcanic caldera are outside the frame of this shot, far below and to the left.

Much, much further to the northwest (well beyond the background of this image) lies the village of Oia, which is where people go to see the most spectacular views of the Santorini sunsets over the caldera.

But as I'll show in future posts - and as you can start to see here - the view from this vantage point is pretty spectacular already!

(And yes, the cat from my previous 'Hotel Keti' posts liked to hang out with us on this balcony. Who wouldn't? More on that later.)