A Weekend in Mykonos

The winds were horrible on the sea tonight as our ferry left Samos and headed for Mykonos. I definitely needed to take my ginger pill, and thankfully I had them with me. The ferry boat was really nice and built more like a cruise ship as it had a lot of levels and nice seating everywhere.

As the ferry moved on, I sat watching some TV I’d downloaded and was quickly joined by the Greek Canadian I’d met waiting for the ferry to arrive. He was a little obnoxious and loud, but nice and seemed to be interested in chatting. So he sat next to me and talked about various things from our trip in Greece to business to his life in Canada and mine in the US.

After being delayed for quite a bit due to the rough waters, we arrived in Mykonos around 9pm. I hadn’t booked anything in advanced as most places you can just arrive and you’re bombarded with people touting their places available, but since our boat was more than an hour late, it left us at the port with little to few options.

One woman proclaimed to have a spot in downtown which is where I was headed to meet with my friends from the Turkey cruise. I believed her, and joined her and her ratty dog in her beat up Suzuki jeep and headed for the place ‘in town’.

In town meant more than a 30 minute walk from it over a mountain, and I quickly stood my ground and told her that this was not what she had described and I wouldn’t be staying there. So out I went with all my stuff and had to walk all the way to the center of town. So my first impression wasn’t so great.

On my way down I met a couple of English girls who joined the walk to the town. Once we arrived, I asked if they knew of a specific bar that I knew my friends were at, and they said ‘no clue’. Right when we bid adieu, I looked up and there it was, right in front of me. So I ran inside thinking I should drop my stuff and go find a place to stay quickly to join them for a late dinner.

Everyone was happy to see me and I was so glad to have met up. Now the challenge was to find a place to stay. I went ahead and took my stuff with me and Ang joined to help out. It was not as easy as I’d thought it would be to find a place, and we went from hotel to hotel to guest house to guest house, not finding anything. Finally we found a store where the shop keeper was very helpful and helped sort out a place that was nearby. Long story short, I was able to get my stuff sorted, at a pretty dodgy place, but great location, so it was fine.

I joined back up with everyone and got some food to eat and hung out before going back to crash.

The next day we tried to organize meeting up, and I walked throughout the whole town which was like a complete maze. It was pretty and cosmetically Greek, with all the white buildings and blue roofs, but also seemed completely fake and catering to the hoards of tourists that filled the alleyways and paths throughout the town. Prices reflected this fakeness as well, and having come from quaint little Samos, I was quickly disinterested in seeing what more Mykonos had to offer.

I went ahead and rented a scooter from the shop next to my apartment and went to find Ang and Cam. We didn’t have internet connections, so we weren’t able to meet up because their stuff was taking forever. Mine took forever with a fiasco with a different scooter company that had quickly come to an end when I said I wanted a scooter that had a gas meter that worked. The store owner didn’t like my ‘demands’ and threw the money back at me and took the helmet right off my head and shewed me away. This type of behavior is reminiscent of behavior I endured in Thailand’s islands that signals to me these places are sick of foreign tourists. Sick as they are of ‘tourists’, I imagine the money they are reaping in by gouging everyone is providing a better lifestyle, but the easiest thing to do as a ‘tourist’ is to just move on and to the next place.

I headed to the meeting spot just to see if Ang and Cam were there, and amazingly on the street passed them on their quad bike. So I did a uturn and joined up with them and we went exploring all over the island stopping at various beaches, eating, laying out in the sun, and visiting little churches. It was fun to have the freedom to go wherever we wanted quickly and easily.

That evening we met up with some other friends they’d met and had some dinner along with going out to see the night life. The bars were crowded and smokey so I didn’t last long at all. After a bit, we called it a night and got our plans together for where we were going the next day. I had a lot of ideas about where I wanted to go next and I was considering going all the way down to Crete with Ang and Cam, but after researching and looking at ticket prices of making my way down there the way I’d thought, I opted to go ahead over to Athens and call it quits on the islands.

The next day I packed up my things again and headed out to the ferry terminal to catch my ferry to Athens. I spent most of the day in the café and got caught up son some email and work.