The pleasures of Greece are simple but intense: diving from a yacht into water so clear that you glimpse pebbles on the sea floor 50 feet below; turning over a fragment of white marble to find marks left by a chisel 2,500 years ago; sitting in the shade of a quayside awning to eat lightly grilled fish served with lemon, oil and fresh oregano; and watching the sun descend into the Aegean with a glass of chilled white wine from Santorini and a dish of olives from Kalamata. Ultimately, though, it is the intensity of the light that is incomparable. Greek sunlight endows the landscape with an atmosphere of numinous significance. Colors are supersaturated, and nowhere else in the world are the sea and the sky quite so flawlessly and fathomlessly blue.

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