Mykonos Town: Gorgeous weather, lots of charm, lots of shops. The town is the only population concentration of consequence and the epicenter of the island's notorious nightlife. It throngs with tourists and shoppers; often it seems to consist of nothing else.
One of the most charming areas of the town is so-called Little Venice (its real name is Alefkandra) where the sea laps at the base of Venetian-style houses adorned with wooden balconies which jut out over the water. This is a great place to sip your sundowner before you take your pick of the myriad of music bars and discos which have given Mykonos its reputation as one of Europe's hottest party playgrounds.
Mykonos Town (officially called Hora) is an absolute delight but you'll simply have to resign yourself to getting hopeless lost in it. It's a bewildering labyrinthine confection of narrow white alleyways originally designed to confuse the pirates who once plagued the Cyclades.
This street maze hosts hundreds of shops selling jewelry, postcards, and endless varieties of the de rigueur cotton white beach shirt (one of which I purchased).
The Wind
I stayed in town until after the sun went down, wandering up and down, lost in the street maze but fascinated. The Meltemi, a local wind known for lasting 3-6 days, was blowing that night and it rocked the boats while I sat. It was dark down by the harbor and pleasant, with the wind blowing, to be alone. Although it was nine or ten, the "famed nightlife" was still hours from really getting underway.
Today's wind report for Mykonos
The Hotel
My hotel was near a little village called Oronos. It hugged the beach on a narrow isthmus a few km's away from Mykonos Town. It was paid for by my many nights spent working on the road.
The NightThe next day I went to see the ruins on the nearby island of Delos, birthplace of the gods Artemis (Wilderness and Fertility) and Apollo (Wisdom). That will have to be a separate set of
pictures. The ruins were incredible. It was Saturday night, the siren song of "Europe's hottest party playgrounds" was one I could hardly ignore, especially being 5,700 miles from home. At 11:45 p.m. I arrived on my rented scooter in Mykonos Town (you must really rent a scooter on these tiny islands!). At 12:15 a.m., I was chatting with two girls from Chicago. By 2:15 a.m., we had been to three bars and bought two rounds each, which makes 6 per person or 18 drinks total. At 2:30 a.m., I sat at the bar, ate weird local appetizers (I can't remember what, but they were colorful) and talked with the proprietor about the history of the place. It was one of the places with balconies from the Little Venice picture above. He was a short tan old man with wild bushy white hair, wearing denim shorts and a white beach shirt. It shocked me to discover that he had grown up in this building; it seemed very unlike a home at the moment. Slowly though I noticed the house it had been before it was a bar. He pointed out ancient pictures hidden in the recesses of the ceiling corners; these were his parents, his uncles, his cousins. It was strange sitting there, thinking of this man who spent every night with a sprawl of anonymous foreign drunkards, while in truth he was always among the family who looked down on him from the walls. At 3:15 a.m. the two girls and I stumbled through the streets (as predicted) trying to navigate by daytime landmarks. Amazingly, the street was still crowded and the shops were still open. We arrived at a popular backpacker bar, The Skandinavian. Somehow we managed to get near the bar; the place was packed with kids of all nations. They swirled around me, engulfing; it seemed they were hanging from the rafters. There was long hair, blackened eyes, braids, youth, makeup, local stallions, plaid skirts, rickety chairs, bare arms, three day sweat, reckless smiles... think of the composite miles traveled recently by the hundreds of people in that room. I stuck with the two Chicagoans. When in Mykonos, dance on the tables. Soon we were. Drinks continued. I hadn't brought my camera along to document all this, but somewhere in Chicago there is a picture of me hanging from the rafters.
At 6:15 a.m. I made it back to the hotel. Awoke much later, and after restoration by coffee and eggs I headed for the beach.
The Beach
After several minutes on scooter over donkey-cart wide paved roads and down dangerously steep unpaved ones, I found Super Paradise.
The two most famous [beaches] are Paradise and Super Paradise which are beautiful, packed and geared to the young clubbing set. The setting truly is paradisiacal but don't come here for a peaceful family picnic - music blares from huge loud speakers and during high season the beach partying often continues round-the-clock. This is a place where gorgeous go-go dancers sporting little more than the world's tiniest thongs gyrate obscenely on the bar and table tops. Bucket and spade types be warned!
It was wild enough for a Sunday. Topless women, teen to elderly, strolled by or luxuriated in the clear water in front of me. Suntan lotion was rubbed on glowing breasts near my beach chair; I was inhabiting a world of images generally belonging only in my head. I tried to read or sleep with varying success.
The beach thinned out and the music from the bar grew louder. I could stay, order drinks, start in again on Saturday night, forget all about my current sobriety, and scooter home over the desert hills at dawn, dreary-eyed, brain hot and cratered with visions of what I'd experienced.
The Island
But I wasn't going to stay; I was ready to get back to the hotel. The scooter just barely had the power to climb the steep hill exiting the beach, but soon Super Paradise was out of view and I zigged through Mykonos' rocky interior.
Inland Mykonos is barren and not much to write home about.
So says the tourist guide I've been quoting. Take away the tourists and Mykonos would be indescribably barren. Nearly everything (food, building supplies, tourists) must be brought in. At another popular Greek Isle, Santorini, all drinking water arrives by ship. I'm not sure about Mykonos. I did see some goats being milked.
There were a few small herds of goats, not more than four or five animals, and even some short stocky cattle. There's an "island rule" in evolution that states that large mammals tend to evolve to be smaller in stature once stranded from the rest of their gene pool, apparently finding a new optimal size to fit the new food/predator landscape.
In any event, it was obvious nearly all the food, everything in the shops, all the liquor, all the gold in the dozens of jewelry stores, was brought in over the sea, perhaps on the same ships the tourists themselves arrived on. The party was bigger than the island itself.
The mental landscape up here, away from the coast, was so different from the excesses down below. Construction continued. I'm told that the climate here was very different during Greece's Golden Age, much more wet and fertile. The nearby island of Delos, now desert and rock and uninhabited, had a thriving trading metropolis and a lake and palm trees at the spot where Artemis was born.
Around one corner, I came upon an man riding a small donkey. He was riding it so proudly. I slowed way down and contemplated the scene as he plodded on ahead of me. It was certain this old man wasn't about to come to my island and rent a scooter. It was a gorgeous moment, he was alone on the dusty road and the sun was setting. Eventually I realized I'd kick myself if I didn't get a picture, even though I felt like a cad for intruding. I pulled over and fished out the camera. By the time I had it ready, he was around the corner. I got back on the scooter, raced ahead to try again. But on readying the camera once more, he was already around the next corner. I gunned the scooter, but he had turned down a small private lane and I didn't dare follow anymore. This is the only shot I got, you'll have to take my word about the donkey.
I'd missed the shot. There'd been so much more to see here.
My cliché Greek photo. If you look through the tourist literature, you'll see tons of island churches like this. Though usually they are blue (and on Santorini).
The light was really quite fantastic, I wished I had all my gear and the time to set things up properly.
The next night I was in Athens, headed home.
