Mykonos, Greece

July 10, 2010

We spent half a day on the island of Mykonos. It was beautiful, but it was a different kind of beauty. The island is very rocky and not green at all. I guess what made beautiful was the quaint little houses. They are all square-ish in nature and painted white. The law mandates that all the buildings must have this design and can’t be more than two stories per level. However they can paint the doors and window shutters any color they want. Most are a vivid blue that you see a lot of in Greece, but many are painted a really deep red.

We did “The best of Mykonos” bus tour which took us around the island to see the highlights. Our first stop was at a small pier to see the island of Delios. This is the island where Apollo, god of the sun, was born. Our next stop was a monastery that was run by to very old monks that had been there for fifty plus years. The inside of the chapel was crazy. It was completely decorated from ceiling to floor in the Baroque style. Everywhere you looked there was something to see. We then drove to the opposite side of the island to one of the beach resorts and got to stick our feet in the ocean for a few minutes. We also got our first exposure to European beaches where people like to sunbathe topless…

We then rode to the town and did a short walking tour to see the town and the famous windmills. In the town the building as pretty close together and the streets wind all around. It is extremely easy to get lost! Our guide told us this was a defense mechanism back when there were tons of pirates around. When the pirates would attack the people would run to the back of the city and hide there. The pirates would then be forced to split up to move through the city. Some streets are so narrow only one person can get through at a time. So then the people of Mykonos could pick off the pirates a few at a time and defend their city.

When our tour was finished, Brice and I walked up the hill to the windmill. The view was amazing! But we went back down pretty quick because it smelled like fish. We then attempted to make our way back through the town to the main square and the harbor. On our way we stopped at a hole in the wall place to try an official homemade Greece gyro. It was pretty good. It was lamb cut from a big round hunk of meat wrapped in fresh pieta break with red onion, tomato, french fries, and some sort of ranch/mayonnaise sauce. Pretty tasty!! Brice didn’t want any of it, but he “held” it for me for just a second and when I turned around it was almost gone. I got the last bite. It was a good thing I got a few bites in before he “held” it. We then strolled back to the boat.