Greece
Santorini
White villages balanced on a caldera rim where the sea has flooded a volcano's shattered heart.
The caldera drops away beneath whitewashed villages stacked along the rim, sheer volcanic cliff falling into water so deep it turns indigo. At sunset the whole western face of the island goes molten.
Santorini pairs the caldera villages of Oia, Imerovigli and Fira with the excavated Bronze Age town at Akrotiri. Assyrtiko vines are trained low against the wind, while local fava and tomatoes express the island’s dry volcanic landscape on the plate. Boat trips cross to Nea Kameni and the waters around Palaia Kameni, and the coast changes from black sand to sculpted lava and pale pumice.
Couple
Caldera walks, small winery visits and long dinners where the view changes colour between each course.
Friends
A boat day across the volcanic basin, black-sand swimming and an evening through Fira’s lively lanes.
- Oia, Imerovigli and Fira run along the rim of a flooded volcanic caldera.
- Akrotiri preserves a Bronze Age town beneath the volcanic material that buried it.
- Assyrtiko vines are trained low in basket shapes to withstand the island’s wind.
- Boat trips cross the caldera to Nea Kameni and the hot springs around Palaia Kameni.
Tomatokeftedes — the island's intense cherry tomatoes, fried crisp at the edges.
Assyrtiko grown in volcanic ash, served cold on a caldera-edge terrace at sunset.
Okinawa Main Island
Japan
A subtropical kingdom with its own language, its own martial art and famously long-lived people.
Bozcaada
Turkey
A wine island you can cycle in a morning, its harbour fortress layered by four empires.
Kii-Katsuura
Japan
A tuna port with Japan's biggest raw-tuna market, and hot-spring baths inside a sea cave.
Miyako Island
Japan
Bridges spanning to tiny coral islands across water so blue it hurts to look.
Pelion
Greece
The centaurs' mythic homeland — chestnut forests and stone villages sliding from peak to shore.
Ioannina
Greece
Ali Pasha's lake fortress — silversmith workshops and Ottoman mosques on an island reached by boat.
Prespa Lakes
Greece
Byzantine hermitages painted on cave walls above a lake shared by three countries.
Corfu Old Town
Greece
Venetian alleyways hung with laundry open onto a cricket pitch — Greece's most Italian island.