10.02.06
It all started with a picture…
I’ve used Webshots as the source for pictures for my desktop background for years. They have lots of free pictures that you can download, so every so often I’ll visit the site and download some new ones. Many of the pictures from this site are quite beautiful, but one in particular kept catching my attention. It took me a while to realize that every time I saw it, I thought, “Oh, that place looks awesome.” Something about the clean white-washed walls of the buildings stacked on a hill leading down to the bright blue of the ocean captured my imagination. I found out it was a picture of some island in Greece named Santorini. I kept seeing it in pictures online (and even in a movie or two), and that served only to feed my imagination more. Did you know there was a place where they painted all their walls white, and the domes of their churches bright blue?
I shared my fascination with this place with my friend, Evelyn, who I knew would at least appreciate the beauty of the photographs (not to mention the blue paint). I think somehow she understood how I felt, because when I left MIT last year to move back home, she gave me what is probably my favorite present ever. She painted me a scene from a photograph of Santorini she had found online. On the back, in typical Evelyn fashion, she had written, “Don’t forget to go!” I’m sure when I saw that I said something like, “I’ll go someday.” But practically speaking, a trip to Santorini felt like it was pretty much in the same category as a trip to the North Pole - technically possible, but highly, highly improbable.
And yet, here I am, less than three weeks away from the beginning of a trip that will take me there. After a few days in Paris to take in the sights, Evelyn and I will board a plane for Athens and then a ferry to Santorini. I’m not really sure what to expect, or what we’ll even do there (besides trying to find the church in Evelyn’s picture). I think what I’m really hoping for is a taste of the magic that has been hinted at in all of the pictures I’ve seen but that can never be fully captured by them.