As we were landing, I had a bit of the same impression that I'd had nine years ago, that Athens is a very sprawling city, stiflingly so, with low-medium rise buildings packed very densely, as far as the eye could see. In retrospect, I can't say that parts of Brooklyn and Queens aren't similar in appearance as you descend to JFK...maybe it's just that Athens has a much drier climate than the US East Coast, so the concrete in Athens is not tempered by lush green in the parks and the streets the way it is in NYC. I feel that lack of green upon my return from the West Coast, too; I guess I truly am an East Coast girl! :)
That being said, I would love to go back to Athens someday, and see a bit more of the city. There is so much history there, so much liveliness, so much dynamism, unparalleled in many of the places I'd visited in Europe. I didn't find Athens to be a beautiful city like many in Europe, but a dynamic one. Its bustle reminds me of parts of lower Manhattan: Fulton and Nassau Streets, Chinatown. It was the commotion that made me prefer Boston to NYC when I first came home from Zuerich, but ultimately drew me to NYC later. So after all of three days there years ago, and all the improvements that have been made since: the expanded metro system, the ongoing restoration of the Parthenon, I certainly hope to return someday.
But not today. I had no desire to do so today, as on our long-awaited trip, on a beautiful summer day, the Greek Islands beckoned!
After a delayed layover, whose end was not entirely clear- again, bustle, not beauty and orderliness- we boarded our little puddle-jumper of a plane! Yay!
When we first decided to spend a week in the Greek Islands, we had a bit of a geography lesson to just figure out where we wanted to go. There are literally thousands of islands, 227 of which are inhabited. Most of the islands can be sorted into different archipelagos. Mykonos is in the Cyclades, the archipelago southeast from Athens that seems to sit smack in the middle of the part of the Aegean Sea defined by southern mainland Greece (near Athens), Crete and Turkey. It is known as an area that is very nice for vacationing. Mykonos especially, has become quite a beach destination. For our purposes, and probably for many other people too, it has an airport, which many of the other islands lack, so it was easier for us to get to.
With map in hand, I was able to look out the window and follow exactly where we were. After a short time the island of Mykonos came into view. We approached it from the southwest, and so were able to see a bit of the south coast.
The narrow little isthsmus is Ornos. This is where we were going to be staying, near the beach on the bay on the south side-where you can see all sorts of little boats anchored. Mykonos town, or Chora, is the more densely built-up area about halfway up the bay on the northside of Ornos. The giant cruise ship and the two smaller boats to its right (east) seem to be aiming right for it in this photo.
As we continued along the southern coast we could see some of the other beaches of the island- these were all called out in our guidebooks.
And this photo really strikes me. Not for its photographic quality (hah!), but for the water! Even from up here in the airplane you could see so clearly, all the way to the bottom!
The plane turned and we made our descent.
Yay! We're here!
We grabbed a taxi to our hotel, and AM and I got to marvel for the first time at T's command of the Greek language. She'd taken a year of Greek when she was in school, and with her fabulous capacity for learning languages picked up quite a bit, and could still use it, so many years later!
Our hotel was very nice, and as with everything else, contrasted so much with our lovely little farmhouse at Spannocchia! Where our week in Italy was one of having a "home", cooking meals together, seeing the sights and taking in something of the local culture, our week in Greece was much more of a resorty, beach vacation. We stayed at a hotel, had breakfast poolside, spent our days at the beach and went out for dinner every night. It was kind of neat that we had this contrast between our two weeks, and in terms of all three of us getting what we wanted out of our trip, I think it worked very well.
We had a cute little terrace off our room,
and looked out on the houses of the neighborhood. They were so stark, and simple in their cubic nature. But there's something very beautiful about the pure white and the accents of bright colors against the greys and beiges of the hillside that just wouldn't be as beautiful elsewhere.
We found a place just down the street to eat dinner, where we enjoyed the first grilled meat and tsatsiki of the week!
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