Welcome to Slide Night at Back in a Bit, where we pore over our favourite holiday photos and the little quirky stories behind them.

This week it’s Crikey intern Matt de Neef’s turn:

Santorini, Greece (click to enlarge)

Matt writes: When you’ve spent nine weeks travelling Western Europe, it’s pretty hard to pick out a solitary highlight. But, if I had to pick one moment in two months of unabated awesomeness, my visit to the Greek island of Santorini would probably be it.

Keen to avoid the crowds and expenses that a summer visit to Europe would entail, my partner and I decided to begin our travels in late November. We flew into Athens and after a three day tour of the sites of ancient Greece, booked a berth on the ferry to Santorini.

For those that haven’t seen photos of the island, it is famous for its bright white houses clinging precariously to the edge of a sheer cliff. “Precariously” is precisely the right word too because the island is essentially a large volcano which, after several violent eruptions in the past, will almost certainly erupt again at some point.

The photo you can see is of your humble narrator releasing his inner child at the island’s old port. The town of Oia and its distinctive white houses are perched several hundred metres above this shot, and slightly to the left.

While we experienced sub-zero temperatures later in our trip (-5° in Berlin), that day on Santorini was comparatively tropical. The air temperature was around 20° and, due to the volcanic activity below the island, the water temperature was about the same.

This photo is a snapshot from a good couple hours spent running and jumping off the docks while a lone fisherman (seen in the background) watched on.

Shot using: Canon Powershot A630