Day #4
After 'celebrating' the national holiday in Athens, Julie and I were more than ready to begin our journey to the Greek islands and leave the mainland behind us. So we woke up extremely early, caught the Metro to the port, and made our way to catch our ferry to the island of Mykonos.
On the ferry to Mykonos
Once again, I must point out the excellent pre-planning and booking done by Julie. She had the metro schedule and ferry schedules printed out and ready to go, and after a bit of confusion as to where our ferry line's headquarters was, we got our tickets and had time to spare. So we walked over to the local cafe in the port and were immediately hit with the smell of fresh baked pastries and freshly brewed coffee. Since the ferry would be a couple hours long, we decided to grab a snack for the trip, and boy did we have options. I asked the guy behind the counter what my options were, and I swear this is what he said as he gestured to each item down the line...
"I have a cheese pie, cheese pie, cheese pie, spinach pie and cheese pie."
Any guesses what I ordered? After getting myself together and avoiding laughter while I tried to figure out if this guy was for real, I jumped at the chance for the cheese pie I had been reading about in all the travel books. We got our coffee and our pastries, headed up the ramp to our high-speed ferry, found our seats, and I immersed myself in the Mykonos section of two different travel books, catching me up with all of Julie's knowledge and research.
Our ferry made two stops along the way to some local islands, allowing us the opportunity to stand out on the deck and take in the sights and sounds of the different island ports. After a couple hours of research and planning for tavernas, cafes and shops, we were both ready to hop off the ferry and see Mykonos! Among the Greek islands, Mykonos is widely known as the island with the most happening nightlife, has a very gay-friendly scene at its bars and beaches, and everyone dresses to the nines as they come out in hoards at night to "walk the catwalk" and show off around the local streets. More on this later...
After a bus ride from the port to the inner streets of Hora (the main capital area of Mykonos), we arrived around 11am, and set out with our luggage to find our hotel. The first thing you notice when in Mykonos are the extremely narrow streets where they do not allow cars throughout the hub of the city. The only vehicles that can even fit in the tight streets are the local scooters that buzz around and make daily deliveries of fresh fish and produce to the local vendors. Walking with our luggage amongst other tourists in narrow streets made for a hairy little walk to the hotel, with a few "excuse me" bumps along the way.
Searching for our hotel in Mykonos
The second thing we noticed were the white-washed walls, and the painted stone ground. The city actually has flat, stone roads, and the locals routinely take white paint and make circular designs on the roads to make them look like bumpy, cobblestone paths. It's quite a sight! Combine the white walls and ground with the beautiful colors of the window frames, doors and store fronts, and the place was a picturesque postcard everywhere we looked.
We took a while navigating through all the narrow streets (none of which were marked with street names), but we finally found our way to our cute boutique hotel, Villa Penelope. Our room wasn't ready yet, but the hotel staff let us leave our luggage in the lobby, and gave us a suggestion for where to go grab a snack while we waited. With new motivation to find food, we set out to check out the port and master the awkward road system. But it didn't take us long to make our way to the water, and it was there that we were greeted by the island mascot, The Pelican. A humongous pelican was walking the streets, then sat in a water fountain for all to see (and for the brave, to touch). After taking the obligatory photo, we sat down at the taverna our hotel suggested and ordered some refreshing fresh fruit juice and sardines and fava while we watched all the tourists take their turn taking photos with the pelican. Our server brought the bill with two small glasses of mastika, a local sweet liquor often served with desserts. yet another notch on our "Look what we tried" belts.
The Pelican
Our batteries charged, we returned to our now-ready hotel room and checked in. The place was a quaint two-story apartment, with a steep staircase connecting a lower kitchen area to our upstairs bedroom. With Julie having told the hotel we would be visiting on our honeymoon, we were pleasantly surprised to find a bottle of wine and treats on our bed waiting for us. This was an awesome treat, and it more than made up for our leaking air conditioner (all I have to say is "drip....drip....drip").
A treat in our bedroom!
We dropped off our luggage and took a shower, then went out to explore the popular western area of Mykonos, referred to as Little Venice. This area is well-known for its windmills perched on a hill, as well as its stunning sunsets along the water. We toured around the area, took tons of photos of the white streets, large windmills, and plenty of local cats that roamed the area. We were also very glad to be near the water, with the temperature settling somewhere in the mid-90's. How those cats do it, I'll never know. How did we handle it? Well, the only way we knew how...with gelato! Julie sprang for the lemoncello, while I splurged and got scoops of nectarine and mango. So refreshing!
Mykonos Windmills
GELATO!!!
Man, just writing this I can't believe how much we did each day, especially considering we haven't even got to sunset, dinner and the nightlife. Oh man, this is gonna be a long post. And this paragraph just made it unnecessarily longer. My apologies.
That night, we decided to take in the famous Mykonos sunset by walking to a water-side bar in Little Venice, posting up in some great seats facing the windmills, and ordering a couple cocktails. We both took quite a few deep breaths, soaked it all in, and found ourselves glad to be relaxing in a beautiful place. Definitely my first "Wow, we're on our honeymoon" moment of the trip. And believe me, it wouldn't be the last.
Sunset drinks
After drinks and sunset, we decided to eat dinner with the hip crowd and wait until around 9pm to make our way to Niko's, a bustling outdoor taverna with a treasure chest of fish on ice for the customers to pick out. I chose the red snapper, while Julie sprang for the grilled squid. We shared our first Greek salad of the trip to start, and of course, no dinner on the whole trip was complete without a liter of white wine to compliment our fish! The grilled squid was tender and flavorful, and the red snapper was well cooked, and served with lemon and olive oil. The atmosphere was a fun one, with waiters snagging every passerby and placing them at a table, and the entire place was hoppin'.
Following dinner, we convinced each other that we had to get a real taste of the local nightlife we'd read so much about, so we found the most epic cocktail bar (Aroma) that sat on the corner of the two largest roads in the city. This place had outdoor seating, and we plopped ourselves down right in front on some cushions, and for the next 2-3 hours, we sat there gawking as we people-watched. We saw the highest of heels, the brightest of colors, the blingiest of bling, the poppiest of popped collars, and the boobiest of boobs. We were in heaven. I can't even begin to explain all the people and things we saw during that stretch of time. All I know is the Greeks and tourists in Mykonos are bold, confident, and slightly color blind...and that made our night awesome. So awesome that we stayed long enough for me to have a few drinks, leading me to stumble and laugh like a little boy the whole way back to our hotel, much to Julie's delight.
And thus ended our first day in Mykonos. Stay tuned for the next post, where we explore some ruins, explore Paradise (Beach, that is), take in more sunsets (and cocktails), and drink out of a penis-shaped liquor bottle.
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