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The Island of Mykonos
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| Our flight with Agean Air only took about 25 minutes before we landed at the small airport on Mykonos. A quick 10 minute drive and we arrived at our hotel "The Princess of Mykonos", pure white with blue doors and windows looking out over the Mediterranean sea. The hotel is situated at Agios Stefanos about 3 kilometers from the main town, a very small and quiet location far from the maddening crowd. |
Princess of Mykonos
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Pool area
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Today Heather and Denis are due to arrive, to (we hope) a surprise. After breakfast we walk down to the port with its mixture of cute Greek fishing boats and modern hi-speed ferries that link all the islands. It is from here that we will take our ferry to Santorini in a few days. As lunch time approaches we go and sit in the reception area to wait for Heather and Denis to arrive. Denis is first in the door and when I call out his name his first response is "now why doesn't this surprise me". We had contacted them so many times trying to make sure they would come to Mykonos, that they suspected something was up. So our surprise was only half a surprise, they had apparently said to one another "I think they are in Greece" after yet another text from us!
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Our beach front cafe
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Cruise ship in port
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| We all walked down to a beach front resturant and had a great lunch with Greek beer and salad, before catching the bus into the main town "Chora". It is just the start of the tourist season and already the town has tourists everywhere, their numbers swelled by a large cruise ship that had docked that morning. The whole island is a picture postcard with its blue and white buildings glistening in the sun and the town is just a maze of small streets and alleyways. At its center are all the tourist shops, but as you move up the hill the streets get even narrower and wind around so you soon lose your sense of direction. There are little stair cases going in all directions with doors and windows of every size, even the streets are painted white in a sort of crazy paving pattern. For us, this is such a change from Thailand, so neat and clean with every building looking as if someone loves it. |
Mykonos Windmills
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Old Port area
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| After 2 hours wandering around we decide to have an iced coffee and some traditional Greek Baklava (a pastry filled with nuts and soaked in syrup). We sit at a little harbour side cafe and all is great until we get the bill and find out our coffee and cake cost $60, that's the down side of cute tourist villages. Dinner that night is back near the hotel where we don't need a second morgage just to eat. Stefos the owner and Dimitri the waiter are soon to know us well. Each night before going out to eat the four of us gather on our balcony for wine, chips and nuts. We have been buying 1.5 litre bottles of greek red and drinking them in one sitting. Dinner each night is sensational with delicious greek salad, stuffed mushrooms, grilled vegetables, calamari. The fish was very expensive, from $75 to $110 per kilo and that was whole fish, by the time it had been cleaned and fileted it would be nearly double, so we gave it a miss. |
Delos boat
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Ruins at Delos
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Street in Delos
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House Delos
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We took a boat out to "Delos" the next island to Mykonos, it is uninhabited but covered with ruins dating back to 2000BC. Much has been uncovered including some very nice mosaic floors, the streets are all paved and the drainage system still works. Remains of several large temples can be seen, with a large central square. It must have been quite some city in its time, but as with many of the ancient civilisations the place was attacked and destroyed in 400AD.
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Venice Mykonos
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A few days later We hired a car and drove around the island visiting some remote beaches, monastries and churches. Much of the island's roads are dirt and not in good condition. Cindy and I were fine but to Heather and Denis this was a new experience & they were therefore a little nervous!. Next morning we arrived in Chora early before the cruise boats arrived, it was a chance to walk the streets and find all those great photographs. Denis and Cindy are both keen photographers so we stopped every few yards for more great shots. It is a beautiful town with such charm, the center is a bit touristy but the higher up you go the more original it becomes. The little houses are all different but all painted the same colour, beautifully contrasted against the bright purple bouganvillea and deep red geraniums.
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Denis at Bakery
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Lunch at Ana Meira
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| We are leaving Mykonos by high speed ferry for Santorini, the ship is due to leave at 2.55pm & scheduled to arrive in Santorini at 5.30pm. Cindy and for that matter me, are not very good on boats, so the strong wind and waves have had Cindy worried for days about her impending nautical venture. Heather and Denis come down to the port to see us off, but the boat hasn't arrived yet so they say goodbye and leave us to await its arrival. First it was to be 30 minutes late, then 1 hour, finally after 2 hours it arrived. No sooner had we left the port than we were told we were going to lay over in the island of "Ios" until the weather improved. At first the sea wasn't too bad, but after we left Nexus it got a bit bumpy. Both Cindy and I were concentrating on not feeling sick and hoping it would soon be over. On arrival at Ios at 9.30pm we weren't told anything except they were waiting for the weather to improve. Finally they announced that the boat would not be leaving until 5am in the morning! There was rush by some to get off and find somewhere to stay, but there was not much accomodation near the port and going further away when you had to be back on the boat by 4.45am was risky. |
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Fishing Boat
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View near Hotel
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Goodbye Heather & Denis
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Ferry to Santorini
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