Europe June 20 Mykonos

June 20 

It was a short stop in Mykonos, just five hours, and that was plenty. Unless you are staying on Mykonos for a few weeks in the estate that Jackie O’s household help stayed in, there’s not a lot to do.  We will be coming back on our return trip next week, due to the cancellation of Santorini, which is disappointing but that’s cruise travel. Santorini is the iconic white, blue domed buildings that you see in photos of Greece.  Sometimes ports of call get switched around and that’s the name of the game.  You can get upset about it or shrug your shoulders.  We’ve learned to shrug our shoulders.  It’s not always the fault of the cruise company – there can be many reasons for a port of call to not be available when it was supposed to be.  As an example, although we were able to dock at Mykonos today, a cruise ship yesterday was not able to do so because of rough seas and couldn’t get in.   Once again our weather was Mary-perfect.  Sunny and breezy so not too hot.  

Anyway, when we return next week we will take a boat ride out to Delos which back in the day was the center of Greece religion and commerce bringing all the city states of Greece together.  More ruins, etc.  I’ll be able to tell you more about that later.

As for Mykonos, it is apparently a great party spot and we can see that is true by the number of beachside restaurants and bars lining the entire old town coastline. A short ferry ride takes us from the ship to the old town.  Al and I just walked around past endless clothing, jewelry, souvenir, you name it shops and got pretty much totally lost.  Rick Steve’s guide advises that’s the fun of Mykonos is getting lost and not really being in any danger of REALLY getting lost.  Having said that, Al heard somewhere that it was built that way to confuse enemies.  

Santorini may get all the photos taken but Mykonos has the same bright white paint with blue trim that is so pleasant to the eye.  The streets are very narrow and people do live there, so laundry hung from the balconies, cats roamed (of course) and one woman on a balcony even shook out her rug practically on top of us (passive aggressive much? Maybe, maybe not). 

There are 16^th century windmills at the top of a hill that we climbed without even realizing it and we hoped to see a couple of museums (archaeology and marine) that were recommended on the Great Courses class. The guidebook said they were closed but the internet said they weren’t and even though we wanted to make sure for ourselves, we never did find them.  

We did come across the cute little Catholic Church (blue dome!) and an old ruined monastery that was quite picturesque.  To be honest we came across the monastery twice and the second time we couldn’t figure out how we got out the first time.  Very maze-like town, and I’m not kidding. We actually hit dead ends. We started to recognize the same shops the third time around.  After walking the length of the endless restaurants and back twice we finally found our way back to the ferry boat back to the ship.  At which point I realized I had forgotten my can’t-live-without-it collapsible green water bottle somewhere along the line.  

Thinking back through the maze I figured I left it near the windmills where we stopped and tried to get oriented enough to find the museums. So back up the hill to the windmills we went and there it was, patiently waiting for me.  This time we went to the ferry dock and went back to the ship.

We really feel that we are doing the quintessential “cruising the Greek Isles” now.  Tomorrow will find us at Crete all day and we have no idea what we are going to do.  At some point on one of these isles I hope to don my bikini (never have I ever) and do a little swimming in the Aegean Sea.  Up until now it’s been tour after tour and I’m ready to just relax for a while.  

We do have some things planned going forward.  Due to a snafu with a cruise shore excursion we have some credit we have to use.  We usually don’t do the shore excursions with the boat but before Santorini was cancelled, we thought we would only be in Mykonos one day and we wanted to see Delos so Al made reservations.  When we knew we would be coming back – for a whole day – he cancelled those reservations, or thought he had.  After some back and forth they gave us credit that we have to use on another excursion.  So when we go to Korcula, Croatia we will be “hiking the city wall” (2.5 miles – “strenuous”) and going to the oyster capital of Croatia.  I hesitated but what the heck, I have my trekking poles, might as well use them…