This did not end upon entering the winding streets of the town itself, as our tour manager explained to us the island
used to be at significant risk of pirate attacks, and as a result its layout is deliberately set out to resemble a maze,
with the streets being no wider than two or three people standing shoulder to shoulder at any point, allowing past
generations to minimise the amount of invaders that could march around the town at any time.
Santorini
From Mykonos we departed for Santorini, which although I never actually planned on travelling to – it was only at
Chris’s insistence that I did the Greek Island tour at all – was definitely one of the places I was most excited to go to.
Like Athens and numerous other places we visited in the coming months, I studied the island of Santorini a fair bit in
high school, focusing on the eruption of its central volcano and in particular how it’s actually theorised to contain the
resting place of the submerged fabled city of Atlantis. Regardless of the authenticity of this theory, I knew the island
was meant to be about as picturesque as it gets, and one of the “optional extras” our tour provided was paying
about 15 euros to go out to the tip of the island and watch the sun set, which the few people I had spoken to who
had been there in their travels said was a must do. Again the island did not disappoint in the slightest, and blew my
expectations out of the water completely, in fact I would rank it easily as one of the top five places we went. Our
hotel was about five minute walk from the main town of Fira, meaning we were free to alternate between sunbaking
at our pool and strolling around town as we liked.
Not being known for its nightlife anywhere near the extent that Mykonos and Ios (our third stop on the tour) are,
Santorini proved to be a bit more of a cultural stop of the tour, serving as a relaxing stop off in paradise between the
two party islands. The town of Fira itself was a lot more colourful and vibrant compared to Mykonos – the laws
differed from island to island, meaning that although Mykonos citizens were forced to paint everything white, other
islands were not as restricted – and if anything was just as maze-like as our previous stop, with our little