...and took in the beach, the water, and the arid hills surrounding us.
I started noticing some of the details on the hillsides. For example, there are tons of little chapels, all of which look very distinctively similar.
They are so frequent that they almost remind me of the little Stations of the Cross that AM and I found along the path up the hill to Madonna del Sasso in Locarno.
Mykonos town is known for its three windmills, but there is also one overlooking Ornos!
I loved all the boats in the harbor.
The shuttle boats were beautiful, with their bright, cheery colors painted so emphatically against their whitewashed hulls!
I marveled at how they pulled right up onto shore, and weren't stranded on the beach and didn't start to float away on the rising water. Apparently tides aren't an issue here!
This confused me- was the Mediterranean not tidal? Did it stop at Gibraltar? That didn't make sense to me, but I couldn't figure out any other explanation. It wasn't until I got home and JH, one of my kayaking friends, explained it to me. The gravitational pull of the sun and moon cause a movement of water, but it's generally horizontal, until it meets up with something that blocks its flow. An island isn't much of an obstacle- the water flows around it as it would a rock in a stream. A river valley, or the coast of a continent, on the other hand, would cause all this flowing water to rise up as it piles against these edges. That's why the tide is so high in the Hudson: a whole ocean of water comes rushing into a narrowing channel. There are many places where the tide is much higher, also due to its geography. In other places, such as Mykonos, apparently, and Fiji at T noted, the water level barely budges vertically.
Oh, and side note, now looking at this photo again: Ornos was listed as a more family-oriented beach than others on the island, despite the fact that plenty of women of all ages were topless! Apparently that's family-friendly in Greece.
We went back to our local grilled meat place, and got our fill of tsatsiki and pita! Mm! And Mythos, the local beer, although we were all dehydrated enough by the end of the day that it generally consisted of sharing a couple!
We went back to the hotel afterwards to play a couple rounds of Wordthief by the pool. Which, for the record, AM is the champion of by far! And don't you let her try to convince you otherwise! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment