Boat arrived quite late (close to midnight), it was nice inside and fairly empty:

the boat being chronically late, opens its doors while still arriving in port to save a few minutes

better late than never...

I'll skip the terrible experience with the rental car dropoff at the boat, and the village idiot we ended up being stuck with and that wasted an entire hour making himself feel important, and eventually arrived quite late at the beautiful hotel with fantastic views:

The next morning, after some needed rest, enjoyed a great breakfast with view:

and then it was time to drive around the island to see the many viewpoints:

still a volcanic island

A lot of history on this island, all the way to potentially being the lost island of Atlantis (the part of it that ended up being swallowed by water after a volcanic eruption)

this used to be an entire crater filled with water

how things changed

One level down, there are actual leftovers of a city:

this is one of the most famous paintings

From there, I went to downtown Fira to enjoy some tourist stuff:

Lots of viewpoints on the road:

cable car from old town

The heart of santorini is a nice hole in a rock:

Next was another archeological site, interesting ruins:

Plenty of cats in Santorini too:

Then continued the island tour:

From there, drove up to ancient thera, another archeological site, which unfortunately was closed early and closed the next day. It's supposed to not be essential, but kind of sucks to get all the way there, just to be turned back at the gate. At least there were good views form the top:

So instead, I opted to visit a couple of wineries. Santorini is very arid, but somehow they still have a tradition of making wine:

The first winery also had an art gallery:

The 2nd winery had a fantastic wine museum that was beyond expectations, literally one of the best such museums in the world:

Then went to the museum:

Cool to see what happened to Santorini:

After that, time to grab dinner and enjoy the view from the hotel and sunset:

Fun to compare with the next morning:

For the 2nd day, I picked a boat tour recommended by the hotel, which ended up being the wrong choice. I did want to see the craters and actually "do stuff" like get off the boat and be on islands, however this boat did not offer that, and felt like mostly a waste of time, even if it did offer some views:

intersting colors on the rocks

other people in the boat went to bathe, but water was kind of cold and I don't really go in the water unless it's to snorkel or dive :)

they offered a nice lunch

After the boat tour that burnt most of the day, there was a bit of time to drive around:

While I thought it would be a tourist trap, in the end Lost Atlantis Experience was actually an interesting interactive museum that makes plenty of fair points that the Lost City of Atlantis, if it existed, may very well have been in Santorini as a good portion of it did sink under water level due to volcanic activity:

This video does a good job explaining what happened to the island:

From there, it was time to drive to the north side by Oia to visit this charming little town where many go see the sunset. The route there was interesting:

Finally, Oia:

then an early morning flight the next day to fly to Malta. Santorini was a beautiful island, great to have seen it.