I, too, have been to many beautiful places in the world. Unfortunately, most of those trips were made before digital cameras were the norm. For deserts, there's Ayers Rock (aka Uluru) in Central Australia. For ocean / sea / water, there is the crystal blue waters of Greece and off of Capri, Italy, as well as the Great Barrier Reef off North-Eastern Australia (I dived near Cairns). For countryside there is Bavaria, Germany dotted with castles (okay, I'm a big fan of King Ludwig II's castles. Not the man, just his architecture.), Quebec Provence in Canada in the fall (those autumn leaves - sigh); we took our honeymoon here. The rolling hills of the wheat fields of Eastern Washington in the spring. For lakes, there's Crater Lake in Oregon and Chiemsee in Bavaria, Germany. (Herrenchiemsee has another one of the Ludwig castles I love.) The purple mountains Majesty (it really is purple) around Yellowstone National Park (Montana and Wyoming), the cloud forests of Costa Rica (clouds form from the volcano nearby), and the peaks of the Swiss alps and the Rocky Mountains.
You can find beauty anywhere, even (if you look hard enough) in the city. From the funky Gaudi architecture of Barcelona, Spain, to the palaces of France, to the Greek and Roman ruins of the Mediterranean (I love the white marble streets of Ephesus, Turkey), to the memorials, White House, and Capitol in Washington, DC (The Department of State building is extremely ugly, though). I find it easier to find beauty if you venture out to the countryside, but that's me. Beauty is all around us! You just have to look for it.
Mike, I envy your trip to Santorini. I was a poor student when I studied abroad in Athens and never made it out there. I had an archaeology prof who excavated there. The inner of the island he said sunk into the sea during an earthquake (perhaps also the one that caused the great flood from the bible) and is rumored to be where the myths of Atlantis come from. It's on my list of places to visit when I finally win the lottery. That and the English countryside and Easter Island and visit the Olmec heads of Central and South America and... Sigh. /adds buy lotto ticket to to-do list./
