If all those Bascilicas can inspire you to god, all these Greek views can inspire you to paint. With 3 or 4 liners in the port today the tenders and cable car to the top of Santorini's town of Fira were set to be full all day. We got off the boat crazy early and made it straight to the top in time for a morning Coffee at the peak.
We hired a driver to run us out to Oia via Firostefani & Imerovigli for the morning. He tried to tell us the top income stream for the island was wine grown in the volcanic earth, but it really has to be the views. At Firostefani we stopped for a few photos and a perfectly framed Disney Magic between the bells and Blue dome of the church, before heading out and along the mountain top and along Imerovigli and on to Oia. The road is cut from the volcanic remains of many eruptions, the deepest being the eruption of around 1500bc that last wiped out the Palace at Knossos we saw back on Mykonos. The earth is clearly striped in deep red iron rich soils sitting on the ash layer with huge lava chunks peppered throughout, before getting to the black pure lava remains, fascinating. 
Just like Venice, I struggle to get my head around the impracticality of living up here in Oia. The reality is that not many really do, the town of Oia is mostly holiday villas, with spectacular views and nice looking restaurants. I don't think you'd ever want to spend more than a week here, you might come to take these views for granted. It was a cracking hot day with even the locals complaining. We returned to Fira just before noon and took a long sloooowww sweaty stroll down into the main township and then back up along the main shopping street towards the cable car. We met that Dan from Apple that had impressed Max a few days earlier, today he impressed me - having climbed all 580 steps from the bottom to the top of the port - insane! 
Boiling hot we stopped in a bar with massive panoramic views from the neighbouring township right out over the ocean to the volcano and back to the northern coast. Better than any other european country so far on this trip the Greeks know about cold drink - ohh so cold. And they kept it flowing so well we stayed there for over an hour soaking in the views, rays, beats and all the bright young things that started to fill the lounges soon after we arrived.
Back on the trail we strolled for another hour stopping in shops and admiring the new astounding view of the same water body presented every few meters. Max met his new Dutch mate in the street so we had to stop and chat awhile. 
The queue for the cable car back down had the kids thinking they should catch the donkey, no way I was decending 580 sun baked, manure filled steps to the bottom so we baked in the queue for awhile, clever greeks sell that Ice cold beer at almost every store that the queue passed by :)
Down on the port we stopped for a few more ice cold Alphas on the water before saying adios to Greece.