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Santorini is a volcanic island that suffered such a huge eruption in 1650 BC that the middle of the island blew away, leaving three-quarters of a ring, the inside edge of which is a steep cliff of volcanic rock. The main cities, Ia and Fira, are built into this cliffside.

(A civilization of people called the Minoans disappeared along with the middle of the island. This is most likely the source of the “lost continent of Atlantis” story, for when the volcano blew, it not only vaporised half the island but sent enormous tidal waves as far as Israel. I believe Disney has turned the Atlantis story into a cartoon. I have not seen it, so I’m not sure how they animated “annihilation by flaming molten rock and/or 750 million vertical gallons of sea water.” Maybe I’ll rent the video.)

Traditional Ian homes are drilled into the rock. From the outside, you might see one room and the patio. A simple facade, like our Blue Sky apartment, could hide an 800 sq. ft. home.

Here are pictures of our 800 sq. ft. home: living cave, bed cave (complete with dirty socks that the photographer’s assistant neglected to pick up), bathroom cave, kitchen cave.

Front to back, the Blue Sky measures 50 feet. This is a design that makes total sense considering the environment, where outside surface area is both minimal and steeply sloped. But it’s a design that is desperate for a cross-draft.

Putting the bathroom 50 feet inside a cave is especially dumb. We only turned on the hot water heater once in four days, but even so, a cool shower would leave the bathroom damp for hours. The builders had wired a small exhaust fan into the light circuit, so that the fan would run whenever the bathroom lights were on. The fan fed a ventilation pipe that exited on the terrace. But the fan was too small to be of much use. I think the CPU fans in my laptop push more air.

So although we coped, I was wishing for a $4 box fan from Home Depot. Or a window on a different wall. Maybe if they’d annexed another ten feet of rock, they could have built a bigger kitchen and opened a back door on the other side of the ridge.

Thinking of that, the construction crews must have had some comical moments. Could there be blueprints of the entire cliff? It seems unlikely. How many times did a builder accidentally poke through into someone else’s bedroom?

The cave life has distinct advantages. The entire neighborhood is quiet, possibly because most people spend their time deep inside their caves. And the views are stunning because there are few tall structures to interfere: here’s what we saw from our terrace. This was our view at breakfast for four days. Oh, and during our mid-afternoon bottle of wine too. Oh, and while we wrote postcards too. Oh, and just before heading into town for dinner.

I stopped to look nearly every time I walked by. It was astounding… the cave houses, the blue water, the islets, the 180-degree panoramic breathtakingness of it all. I had never seen anything like it. With the faint sound of the surf echoing up the hillside, the setting was incredibly peaceful. I didn’t want to leave.

The new Athens airport has two Olympic stores. I saw them both. We had three hours to kill, and it’s not that big an airport.

We found a newsstand selling English-language paperbacks. I picked up a title that looked interesting, some kind of crime-fiction beach novel, and gasped at the price: $15. The next one I checked cost $17. I could buy the entire Grisham library for $17 on half.com.

Our flight to Santorini was delayed, but the delay was not announced. We sat at the gate as our boarding time came and went, wondering whether we were in the right place.

The plane, when it finally arrived, was an abused-looking propeller craft. The interior reminded me of United Airlines circa 1985, with synthetic fabric seatcovers stretched tight across lumpy, uncomfortable, too-vertical frames. There were two seats on each side of the aisle, one class of service (“marginal”), and scratched and dirty windows through which photography would be compromised. I was denied the image of “Santorini from the air” that was supposed to accompany last Friday’s entry. And so began our descent.

A taxi drove us to Ia, a town at the northern tip of the island. Rena, the proprietress of the inn where we’d booked lodging, came out to greet us as we pulled up. She led us up a half-dozen concrete stairs, tough to navigate with our heavy bags, and turned left down a busy sidewalk lined with shops. Our suitcases have wheels, but the sidewalk was uneven — stones in mortar, cobblestone-rough in places.

We didn’t have far to go, but is it turns out, we weren’t going to our room. We’d only stopped for an orange juice. Hospitable but, under the circumstances, poorly thought out, for our apartment was a half-mile in the other direction. Because our flight had been late, the porter had gone home for the day. We dragged our suitcases for 20 minutes through crowds of fresh-off-the-bus tourists, all of whom watched us like we were some sort of local attraction: “Look, tourists!”

We marched on and on, over rough stones, down and up steps, shouldering our way through the crowds into the late-afternoon sun. Did I mention the heat? We were drenched. Did I mention the crap? The town of Ia hosts a population of wild dogs and cats; the sidewalks feature frequent installations of canine and feline digestive art.

Finally, up ahead, Rena turned left off the main thoroughfare. Steps descended and twisted away down the cliffside. There was nothing to do but lift the suitcase and follow. On and on we went, down a ridiculous number of sun-baked concrete steps. We had to stop as a large mutt urinated on the steps ahead of us. After it finished, we lifted our bags and stepped carefully across the spreading, steaming pool. This was a low point in a check-in journey best described by the word “miserable.”

(Some people would begin to laugh at this point. It was so hot, so disgusting, so generally bad, that lots of reasonable people would just give it all up and laugh at their circumstances, certain that things had to get better soon. But not me… I think I have a higher capacity for misery than most people.)

We came to a crazy-steep run of stairs, some a foot high. There were no handrails, just distant concrete patios to break one’s fall. Rena had gamely been dragging one of our thousand-pound bags, but at this point I had to carry both down the stairs. It was grueling and entirely unsafe; had I leaned forward beyond my balance, I’d surely have cracked my skull open on the steps, then been crushed by my own luggage. Perhaps that’s a suitable fate for people who tend to travel heavy.

At the base of the steep steps, Rena turned left and crossed a terrace to reach the front door of the cave house we’d rented. My first impression: the place was huge. Had this cavern been in Missouri, it would have been Jesse James’ hideout.

My second impression: it was very warm and somewhat dank inside. The further in we went, the warmer it felt. The lack of obvious air-conditioning controls could mean only one thing: we wouldn’t be needing any of those sheets or blankets on the bed. To put it mildly.

The size of the place made us nervous. We were certain Rena, who is not fluent in English, had confused our request and put us in the $150/night apartment rather than the $100/night apartment.

So we’d arrived… feeling exhausted, overheated, lost and unsettled. We couldn’t unpack because we were sure we’d be moving to a smaller, cheaper room the next day. We couldn’t cool off because our concrete cave retained heat like a pizza stone in a brick oven. We festered. Or, at least, I did. I’m good at it. (It’s important to know one’s strengths.)

Fortunately, we had four days in the most visually stunning city in Greece to recover. Here’s a teaser image of Ia from the west as the morning sun crests over the ridge.

Here’s the worst thing about leaving town: my server always dies. No, wait, the worst thing is not being able to get my laptop online to diagnose the problem. No, wait, the worst thing is having to rent a slow Windows PC with a Greek keyboard and a gimpy mouse, by the minute, because I have to try to fix the problem anyway. No, wait, the worst thing is the Internet Cafe people have stripped out all the control panels so I cannot change to the Dvorak key layout and I’m therefore reduced to hunting and pecking as I type my desperate emailed help requests. No, wait, the worst thing is that in the stress of the moment I cannot remember any of my passwords because I haven’t used them in two weeks. No, wait, the worst thing is that everyone around me is sucking down cigarettes as if the faint wisps of fresh sea air coming in the door are toxic and must not be breathed at any cost. No, wait, the worst thing is the NetCredit timer software ticking away my last Euro seconds before I finish composin

“You’re going on vacation in Greece?!” exclaimed my brother. “That’s such a Euro thing to do. What’s next, a man-purse?”

Well, there will be no man-purse in my immediate future — not even one of those nice leather ones with the fancy tooling around the edges that match my chaps. But I will be in Greece for the next 10 days. Updates are sure to be sporadic. I can say that with certainty because it’s already 4 days later and I haven’t written anything since I got here.

Here are four more images from the Rotweinwanderweg.

I’ve heard the expression rocky soil, but I think this is beyond rocky-as-adjective. The soil is rock.

The grapes don’t seem to mind, though. They were huge. It’s harvest time, which means the grapes are not only fat and juicy and ripe, but sweet too. I couldn’t prevent my companions from sampling a few bunches. (I couldn’t prevent myself from sampling the samples, either.)

This is a typical vista on the trail, as it winds between (and in one case, through) vineyards.

This is another typical vista: a small town just down the hill, vines growing practically up to the front doors.