Day 4: May 9, 2008 - Mykonos

This morning we arrived in Mykonos. We got up early in hopes of seeing the ship approach the island, but we got up too early and there was nothing exciting in sight. At 10 am we had a safety drill where we had to go to our muster stations donning our orange life jackets. At 11:00, we arrived in Mykonos. The "port" we arrived at did not have much in sight, but there were some cute tug boats and a few fishing boats. The tugboats were painted very bright colors and contrasted nicely with the aqua water.

Per the elderly lady's suggestion, we walked the 3 km (or so) to Mykonos Town, deferring the 6-euro bus ride. We were glad because we were able to admire the hotels and homes along the windy uphill road and take lots of pictures while dodging cars. It gave us a taste of what was ahead. The lady also told us about "the tasteful use of color on the white homes…an artfully placed blue shutter, a red door, etc…" (as if we've never seen a picture of Greek homes before) and also that sometimes "a gate would be open and you could peek into the garden." She said it with such enthusiasm that EVERYTIME we saw a gate, we either mentioned that it was or wasn't opened and that you could or could not peek into the garden!

When we got to the town we were in for a pleasant scene. Everything was painted white and the colors of the trimmings contrasted beautifully. We first came to a big red sailboat with octopus drying on it. Of course, we had to take a picture or 10…overall, we took somewhere near 175 pictures on the digital camera and a full roll of color slides - that's how breathtaking it was.

We grabbed a couple gyros at a small restaurant that charged only 2.50 euro for them. Danny still has trouble believing that it is actually pronounced like "euro" and wants to pronounce it as Americanly as possible every time we order them "ji-row", "ge-ro", "he-yro"…we get the food though and we love them, so it works.

Mykonos is known for these old windmills that are scattered throughout the town. There is a main group of them up on a hill which we (along with all the other tourists) set out to find. Along the way, we walked through the market place - mostly tourist and jewelry shops - which were all painted white with the blue or red or turquoise trim. The roads were windy and narrow with big stones that were also painted white in between. One part of the town is called "Little Venice." This part is mostly restaurants on the water. At first, we didn't quite get why they called it little Venice but when you see it from the hill you see that the restaurants rise up straight out of the water, like the buildings in Venice do.

After taking a billion pictures of the windmills and then going back down into the village to take more pictures, we headed to a beach we had seen from the hill for a few hours. On the way to the beach we stopped at a small "supermarket" and Danny bought a small sample of what he thought was the Ouzo that we've seen the Greeks pour into their wine - we were told it is a liquorish flavored liquor, but the stuff Danny got tastes more like tequila... Well afterwards we found a quiet beach that had a small tavern with beach chairs and umbrellas that you could use for free if you were a customer of the restaurant, so we bought a beer, used their "WC", and hit the beach. There were NO shells which we thought was kind of weird, but there were lots of rocks and many of them were worn smooth from all the tide. We ended up taking a nap in the sun and headed back to town a few hours later.

We were told we should find a good place near the windmills to see the sunset so we thought we would try this spot on the rocks we had taken pictures earlier. It was a really romantic spot we discovered later as it was littered with used condoms…we did NOT add to that collection, but instead decided it really wasn't a good place for pictures and opted to hike up to another windmill we saw in the distance.

We hiked up to the windmill which was gated. It turned out it was one that was a "museum." During the day, you could pay to climb it but we just wanted to take pictures. We came in and sat down and waited for the sun to set. It took longer than we were expecting and the old man who was the "windmill keeper" started locking up the gates. Although he did not speak any English, he managed to signal to us that he would leave one gate open so we could stay. We were very grateful because we had already waited it out for so long. When the sunset finally came, we did get some really pretty pictures and then crossed the street and got even more. The windmill we went to overlooked parts of the town too so we got lots of the white buildings in the background and we could also see the main hill with the other windmills in the distance. The only thing we didn't like was that some cruise ship decided to anchor RIGHT in the middle of the sun's reflection in the port.

On the way down, we took a different route through a downhill stairway/alley in between houses. We couldn't believe that people actually lived right there - there really wasn't any distinction or definite line between the shops and tourist areas and the residential areas where families actually lived. Ironically, at the top of the hill I had been marveling at how well we had managed to learn to navigate the town - everything pretty much looped back to something you would recognize so it was really easy not to get lost. On our way back from the windmill, that theory was shot down. As we entered the retail section of the town, it seemed like we got deeper and deeper into alleyways that we did not recognize - all the while I really needed to go to the bathroom and we were hungry! After seeing a lot of new parts of town, we found the restaurant we had eaten lunch at and decided to get dinner there as well. Danny had another ji-ro/ge-ro/he-yro and I had a Greek salad and a pita with feta. Satisfied, we went to take some night pictures of Little Venice and the windmills and Danny discovered that he could take videos for the website. As a result, we have some "quality" videos of Mykonos at night…you should especially treasure Mr. Compass' demonstration of how to walk back to the ship.

We grabbed a frappe in a café on the water and then took the long hike back to the ship in the dark. Mykonos DID seem to have a nightlife, but we were not dressed appropriately to participate and there was no way we were going to walk all the way to the ship AND all the way back for that. In total, we probably walked at least 10 miles during the day, probably more. When we got back and I looked in the mirror, I noticed I had a tan line from my purse strap that looks ridiculous.

Tomorrow we will be in Paros. We're not sure what there is to do there, but we'll keep you posted.