The Yankee in Mykonos, Greece.
We were in Mykonos, Greece today. The cruise ship arrived this morning and departed mid-afternoon. This is another place you’d like to visit a little bit longer.
There are just under 10,000 people in the island’s main town. The economy is centered on tourism. It is beautiful. Everything is bright white with blue or red trim. The streets are all old stone, maybe ship ballast, or dug from an offending hillside somewhere nearby. They are narrow, curvy and confusing. They were designed to throw off pirates.
The windmills of Mykonos.
The windmills are the famous image for this area. There are a handful left, they were once used to grind up wheat for the locals, though they are no longer operational.
We are here to shop. That, I think after only my second cruise stop, is the entire purpose of the enterprise. The cruise company is in collusion with the port towns and villages to get you there for shopping under the guise of sailing in luxury.
Not that anyone minds, clearly.
So we started working toward crossing everyone off the souvenir list. I picked up something for my mother. We got a few tiny things for others. We walked through the town, stopped in the chapels, looked at the restaurant offering today’s special: sun-dried octopus.
Right out front they had them hanging on a rope on a boat, fresh as a squid, drying in the sun, can be.
We demurred.
We checked out the windmills, watched the tide come in and walked around. We decided to retire here.
If, you know, Greece is still here by then.
Greece is in a great deal of financial difficulty just now (See that, rest of the world? Any of us could be next.) Germany and others in the European Union have bailed them out for a time. This happened just before our trip, incidentally. We’ve visited parts of three countries in the EU since then and have watched the Euro fall each day.
So if Greece is still here in 30 or 40 years, this place is a candidate. Athens may feel different, we’ll be there in a few days, but Mykonos is as isolated, idyllic and unaffected as you can imagine. Or at least that’s the impression you get from walking around in a place for six hours amongst people determined to find just the right thing for the aunt they really don’t want to visit when they get back home. That’s the impression you get while watching octopus skin glisten, wondering Just how long does it take to one of those things sun-dry?
We walked along the beaches, picking up sea glass. The Yankee and her mother collect it. She found some blue pieces which, I’m told, are especially tough to find. The locals just looked on and laughed.
“Silly Americans. Cleaning our beaches.”
I also picked up a few rocks. I’m going to put them on a potted plant’s soil one day, maybe a jade tree. Those, I’ll say, are my little piece of Greece.
Here are a few more pieces, in the form of today’s pictures. Just 17 in that gallery, but that puts us well over 200 published photos for the trip. Here we are at sea. We spent a few days in Rome, you can see those here, here and here.
There are a few videos below, and cross-posted to the A/V page. I have one planned for yesterday and one for today, but it’ll be a few days before I produce them. There’s a panorama of Rome and also a panorama of Santorini.
Not too bad, so far as content goes. Tomorrow we’re in Istanbul. I’ll try to come up with something in the day’s adventures for you to enjoy. We’re enjoying it. This is a great trip. Take it if you can. Or, just send us again.
