The Travel Bug: Santorini sea, sand and sky

Day 9 (17 Nov 2025)

Last day in Greece and I think we saved the best for last. The cruise ship docked at Santorini, an island located south of Greece and part of 33 islands called the Cyclades.

A bunch of us from the group booked the full-day offshore tour with the ship. We could see the houses on the rock edges as we approached in one of the tenders from the cruise ship.

First, we visited Oia (pronounced “ee-ya”), one of Santorini's 16 villages. This is the village with the iconic blue-dome churches.

This is the classic view that you see on all travel brochures to Santorini.

One of the things I noticed immediately is how blue the sky is! It looks almost fake.

We learned the reasons for the white houses:

1) Greece is surrounded by volcanoes, some of which are still active. The houses used to be made from volcanic rock which absorbs heat, so white paint was used to reflect light and cool homes

2) In the 1930s, there was a cholera outbreak and the government made everyone paint their houses with lime-based whitewash as a disinfectant to ward off the virus. Eventually it became a tradition and they decided to paint the windows blue as a symbol of Greek patriotism in line with the Greek flag colours.

Before I came to Santorini, I tempered my expectations, not wanting to be disappointed. I thought it would be like Cinque Terre in Italy which was so crowded and commercialised. Every building was either a hotel, shop or restaurant and I was jostling elbow to elbow with strangers. So not fun.

To my delight, Santorini is much quainter. I'm not sure if it's because it's the low season so there weren't many tourists, but I like that not every building was a shop. Some were people's homes. Many shops were actually closed for the season, and those that were open gave generous discounts to clear their goods.

Perhaps I'm biased towards blue but I found Santorini absolutely delightful. The Mediterranean cerulean and shimmery turquoise everywhere was so aesthetically pleasing.

We even saw the fabled Santorini donkeys! 😍 These donkeys used to shuttle people up the mountains from time immemorial before the cable car was built. But lately there have been calls to stop the tradition since more donkeys have been found to suffer from abuse and neglect, especially having to carry overweight passengers up the hills. 😢

We had time to sample some gelato, pistachio flavour. It's pretty good!

After this, We visited the village of Kamari where the beach has black sand due to volcanic rock.

Santorini is also a wine-producing region. Since it's very dry and they don't get a lot of rain, the locals have a saying: “Save water, drink wine!” We were treated to a wine-tasting which unfortunately was wasted on me since I don't drink. 🤷 I gave most of mine away and drank orange juice instead. But the snacks were great!

The bus brought us to the peak of Santorini, 560m above sea level. The bright blue sky and sea looked unreal - it was like God decided to use it as a canvas for his paintings. And it’s not just any blue – it’s a brilliant cerulean with sweeping splashes of the purest ultramarine you ever saw. It’s the kind of colour artists dream about – without any trace of grey or mud, simply crystal clear pigment.

Later back in Singapore, I painted this scene. I don't usually just paint a cloudy sky but this one was just perfect.

We met some of the other group members so here's a group shot!

To get back to the cruise ship, we took the cable car.

Goodbye Santorini! I think you were my favourite place in Greece.

When I came back to the ship, I went to one of the lounges to paint. There's a perfect cafe on board to paint where you can even order coffee. You just have to be careful not to dip your brushes into it!

And here's the painting. I'm not sure why I brought gouache since I ended up using it like watercolour anyway!

The next day, we flew home via Qatar Airways which is reasonably comfortable and stopping over at Doha Airport is quite hassle-free.

Summarising my thoughts:

1) Greece was not the Bible study tour I thought it would be. I thought a trip to Greece would be walking the lands where the apostle Paul walked as described in the book of Acts. We did go where he went – Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessaloniki – and in some sense, yes, it was quite remarkable to trace the journey of Paul where he travelled and preached the word.

But Greece (or Macedonia in the Bible) of 2,000 years ago is very different from the Greece now. In 2,000 years, most of these places have been destroyed due to various wars and earthquakes, and rebuilt. So in many places, the only clue we had was archaeological sites which were uncovered. Honestly, after a while, all these ruins started to look the same.

In some places, churches or monuments were built to commemorate significant events in the Bible. But these have a tendency to end up being shrines where people would come to worship the relics and icons instead of simply to learn about what Paul did. Which ironically was the idolatry that Paul preached against. So funnily enough, my favourite parts of Greece turned out to be the non-religious parts like Mykonos and Santorini.

2) I have cemented my dislike of package tours with this trip. I remember why I don't go on package tours - crazy long bus rides that take up the bulk of precious daylight, make my butt hurt and make me want to scream. Being told what to do at what time without the flexibility of going to see what we want to see. Waking up at ungodly hours just to get onto bus, being forced to eat food that doesn't appeal.

BUT I do concede that it's tough going on a Bible study tour on your own. It's convenient to have everything planned for you, especially with the cruise portion that would have been stressful trying to arrange by myself. And as far as package tours go, this already had the best group of people because I know quite a few of them beforehand and the ones I didn't were wonderful people because we all share the Tung Ling experience.

So all in all, I think it was a great trip and I'm glad I went. My roommate Agnes was a godsend - she's so easy-going and even though we've never travelled together, we got along waaay better than I could have imagined. She even looks after me and joked to other group mates that she's "the man in my life". 😂