2022 World Tour – Mykonos, Greece
Hello from Mykonos, my 54th stop on the trip, as usual skipping the summary and history as I already did that in Thessaloniki.
I woke up in Athens with the alarm before dawn, prepped and walked 5 minutes over the E7 dock and onto my ferry towards Mykonos for a nice extended-stay visit. We were all required to put on a mask before going up the stairs but once inside nobody cared, even the staff had no mask. I parked myself at a table near the snack area at the back, or “stern” to you landlubbers. It turns out we have two stops along the way, the first was at the port of Ermoupoli on the island of Siros. Now, as you can see from the pictures, this ship is HUGE. What amazed me was the way that the steering guy, or “Helmsman” as I’m told, basically power-slides this massive ship right onto its marks on the pier like a Japanese drift racer from The Fast and the Furious. As the last few feet of gap are closing, they’re already lowering the ramp and the cars, trucks and people start getting on and off, then they raise the ramp as we’re pulling away. It’s a carefully choreographed ballet of water, steel and inertia, optimized by doing it thousands of times. I came away very impressed. Ermoupoli is a pretty port town as you can see from the pictures. Vendors came on board, very loud and shouty trying to sell stuff from their baskets. They pass through the ship quickly so they don’t accidentally go to the next island. We pulled into the port town of Tinos on the island of Tinos only about 45 minutes later. My last stop was the New Port in Mykonos Town on the island of Mykonos. They’re very imaginative with the naming around here.
I rolled off the ship and bought two bus tickets, one gets me to Fabrica, the center point of the hub-and-spoke design of the bus system on the island. The second gets me from Fabrica down to my beach called Platis Gialos. Due to the hills and goat-path road design, the bus station is more like a curve in the road, a chaotic mix of parked cars, pedestrians, buses and tourists on 4-wheelers and scooters with their legs covered in bandages from falling off the bikes. After arriving in Platis Gialos I decided I wouldn’t want to ride anything bigger than a scooter on this island, I don’t know how the bus guys do it. At one point the already-narrow road is impinged by a second floor balcony and vehicles have to take turns to get past it. If I was running the place, I’d have the balcony demolished but it’s probably a thousand years old.
My hotel is happily spectacular, run by a small family who were extremely helpful for all of my questions, and they have a convenience store right on site with prices only double that of the mainland. I was told Mykonos was expensive but wow, â¬4 for a Snickers bar? Luckily we’re way past high season so the room price is reasonable, and I do have the promised chairs and umbrella on my balcony overlooking the little bay. I unpacked and went down to the beach for a couple of hours in the late afternoon. The free beach area is wide open with a very strong wind that felt like I was being sandblasted. Later I came back down and walked the small boardwalk with the bay on one side and restaurants and bars on the land side. Happily they’re playing soft music and prices are only reasonably-high. I tried to order the risotto but it’s got onions…
The next day I went down to the beach and paid â¬10 for a nice cushiony lounge chair and only a small breeze with no sandblasting, the sun is warm but not hot on the skin. The water however is quite chilly, went up to my knees only as there’s a deep drop-off right after that point. Listened to podcasts, read my books, walked up and down the beach, napped, a perfect relaxing day. SpaceX flawlessly launched Crew-5 to the space station, congrats on another successful mission!
The next day I spent an annoying two hours booking my flight home from Istanbul to Bangkok. An Indian airline called IndiGo had a good price but rejected all 3 of my cards due to their over-the-top “security” policies. I paid â¬200 more to go Air Jordan with a stopover in Amman. Being a sucker for punishment I also booked my flight from Thailand to Barcelona in January. I cashed in American Airlines miles on Qatar Airways and one of the segments is on the double-decker A380 that I’ve never had before.
I walked to the next beach over called Hidden Beach for a very good reason. I tried to get there by walking on the narrow paved paths but they all dead-ended, the only way is via a dirt path up and over the big rocks at the end my my home beach. I made friends with the kids in the kebab shop 3 minutes from my hotel, one was interested in getting an electric car so we hit it off right away.
The next day I took the two-bus hustle back to Mykonos Town and walked all through Little Venice and the Old Town. There are 5 dead old windmills on a very blustery hillside, they should put electric generators in them here too. While resting and having some gelato I saw a huge line of people board a series of shuttle boats back to the Celebrity X cruise ship anchored in the harbour. The town is completely overrun when one or two of these ships is in-port. Everything is painted white and blue here like Santorini, it’s like a postcard everywhere you turn. The highlight of my day was buying a Pringles can of Limited Edition Tzatziki flavour, they call the series “Passport Flavours”, but I haven’t seen any others on my travels. A quick search finds London Fish and Chips, New York Cheeseburger, Sichuan Style Kung Pao Chicken, Middle East Style Roasted Pepper & Hummus, Mexican Style Chili Taco and more. What will these crazy kids come up with next?
The next day was dedicated to the island of Delos via a short but massively rolling boat ride – a few butt-clenching times with the wave peak above the top of our boat. Delos is the center island in the local island group called The Cyclades, or Circle. Delos is completely uninhabited and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as one of the most important mythological, historical, and archaeological sites in all of Greece. According to Greek mythology it’s the birthplace of Apollo and his sister Artemis, both names now used by NASA for Moon-trip spacecraft. Delos is also used as the name of the corporation that owns the fantasy vacation resorts in “Westworld” and the first season’s plot centers around the search in a puzzle for the center of a circle. Coincidence? I think not! I made a counter-clockwise loop around the archeological dig sites, from the theater district to the temples, the museum (which was closed and they wouldn’t let me take a picture through the open front doors), the Lions, the Agora and back to the pier. It’s a strange feeling to look over this desolate, wind-swept location whose history goes back over 5,000 years. On the boat ride back I got talking with a tour group from Toronto of all places who were interested in retirement options in Thailand so I gave them the full scoop.
On my last day I rented a 150cc scooter and rode up to the Old Port, the New Port and then to the lighthouse in the far north. Now that I’m driving myself, to call these roads goat paths is an insult to goats. And due to the rugged terrain there is no convenient coastal road, you have to follow a path from the center of the island to a beach, then back to the center and then down another path down to another beach to make your way around. Elia beach was nice but Paradise Beach and the not-at-all-stupidly-named Super Paradise Beach were victims of corporate greed and electronic music. Nobody who goes here should be sober and over the age of 22 – it’s mindless thunka thunka music, with millennials slowly gyrating on a stage. They wanted 60 euros for a beach chair and they had all of their empty champagne bottles stacked up like bowling pins near the front entrance. Yeah nah, get stuffed and get off my lawn while you’re at it.
Is it worth a visit? Mykonos is truly a jewel of the Aegean and has something for everyone. Just be sure to bring your Euros, sunscreen and earplugs.
Next Stop: Rhodes, Greece
