Santorini

Few first sights rival Santorini’s: a crescent of dark cliffs curving around a drowned volcano, its rim frosted with whitewashed villages that spill down toward the blue. This is the caldera — Oia, Imerovigli and Fira strung along its edge — and the sunset over it has become a nightly ritual, best watched with a glass of the island’s crisp Assyrtiko, grown on ungrafted vines centuries old and coiled low in basket shapes against the wind. Beyond the postcard there is real substance: the volcanic black and red beaches of Perissa and Kamari, the Bronze Age town of Akrotiri buried in ash like a small Aegean Pompeii, the whitewashed footpaths between villages. It can be busy — the island now caps cruise arrivals to ease the crush — so linger past the day-trippers: a slow morning on a caldera terrace, a winery at golden hour, a late dinner as the lights come on across the crater. Santorini rewards those who stay the night.

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