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By day, Ia (Santorini, Greece) is three shades of blue and one shade of white. Here are two of the blues in a characteristic Greek-islands photo, the blue-domed church. This is a landmark in the center of town, and it marked our way home; the staircase descending from here led straight to our apartment.

(Well, “straight” is not literally true; to find our apartment you’d have to know which of the numerous forks to follow. I went the wrong way somewhere 80% of the time, whether because I was unsure of my direction or distracted by the awesome sight of the caldera. I got much better at recognizing being off the path by the second day.

We only got really lost the first night, and even then we’d located the Blue Sky within a minute of realizing “we should have been there by now.” The town is not very big, and the long staircases are bookended by the shopping district at the top and the Aegean at the bottom. In between, there are only so many choices.)

The flags around the church were tied off on a building across the street, and remember that by “street” I mean “sidewalk”, not that the Greeks tend to distinguish — cars, scooters, donkeys, and people use all paths constantly and concurrently, the only apparent rules being that cars don’t fit down the narrow streets, and scooters don’t handle steps gracefully.

The picture illustrates what I found so appealing about the architecture: simple lines, clean shapes, solid colors, set against a flawless blue sky.

The third shade of blue is the sea, as shown in this somewhat random snapshot from one of the stairways in town, or this shot of yet-another blue-domed church. (They’re everywhere.)