Mykonos

The next morning we made our way into Mykonos for brunch.


During the day, more so than when we were crushed by the throngs of partying masses at night, I loved the small, densely packed town. Its streets reminded me of the Amalfi Coast and Capri, but with a distinctly Cycladean flair.


The whitewash was meticulously maintained, which I marveled at, given the constant foot traffic through these alleys. With the warm temperatures even at this early hour, it felt like it was a very purposeful effort, designed to ward off the heat. (or maybe it was just the crunchie in me, steeped in the tenets of solar design?) ;)

The town opened and closed around us at various points, allowing for a varied experience that was sometimes my only source of navigation as we made our way through its winding streets.








At times it was very lush with bougainvillas and all sorts of viney plants.


At times it was very stark in its whitewashed purity.


At times it was the paving that was so striking. (I know, who else would take so many pictures of pavement?) :P


The whitewash of the walls carried right down to the street. They maintained the clean white here, too, and even used it to delineate the boundaries of the main thoroughfares and the more "private" pieces of pavement!


There's a real artform to it; the whitewash creates idealized paving stones that may or may not correspond to the actual stones below.

It reminded me of a similar approach in Victorian-era American homes, such as the Susan B. Anthony House: it was not uncommon to stain brick houses an even red, then paint on the mortar joints to look like an idealized, continuous running bond, despite the fact that walls of that height have bond courses in them!

For that matter, women who pluck their entire eyebrows then paint them back on do the same thing, too!

But what really captured my heart were the colors! The bright, emphatic colors, so carefully chosen, or as a palette developed collectively over the years, were so beautiful against the clean, sun-streaked white and the magnificently blue skies!






Eventually we found the harbor.


Along the water's edge we found an open air cafe, and sat down.

We had a nice view of the harbor.




We could see all the boats moored here.


Hm. I think I've got a thing for boats!


Especially this one!


OK, maybe this one, too! :)


After brunch we went back into the winding streets of Mykonos.












Eventually it got to be too hot out, so we made our way back to our beach!

A second day on Ornos beach

The next day started much the same way. We claimed our umbrella...

...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! :)

Ornos

The next morning, after enjoying our first breakfast of Greek yogurt, honey and bread, we got ready and headed for the beach.


Ornos beach was just down the street from the hotel- all of the equivalant of two blocks away, and was lined with thatched umbrellas and lounge chairs.


The harbor was filled with lots of boats anchored here, as we could see from the airplane.


Due to its location it was a jumping-off point for the boats that took people to some of the other beaches.


The water was warm, nice for swimming in, and incredibly clear!




We rented a few of the chairs under an umbrella and claimed that as our home base for the day. The better part of the day we spent relaxing, reading magazines and swimming. Actually, I spent most of my day in the water- I'm too much of a fish to just sit and stare at it when I could be in it! :)

A waitress from the cafe next to the beach came through several times over the course of the day. After looking over the menu hung from our umbrella post we decided this was a great way to have lunch! Greek salads brought to us by Nicoletta became such a part of our Ornos beach experience... along with daiquiris later in the afternoon!

That evening we decided to get acquainted with Mykonos town, and so got cleaned up and went into town for dinner.


The bus that came through Ornos was ridiculously packed, and we were hanging on for dear life! Upon arriving in town we found a little trellis-covered restaurant, and then wandered through town. The streets were very windy and labyrinthine, and packed with clubs and partying college kids. We felt kind of old, because we really didn't feel like we wanted to be a part of that whole scene.

But T found a store with really nice clothes, and along the shore two of the churches were illuminated and were very pretty at night!

Off to Mykonos!

From Roma-Fiumicino, we flew to Athens, to change planes for Mykonos. The only other time I had been in Athens was for a few days in the summer of 1999, with AM. Since then, the 2004 Olympics happened here, and I knew that a lot of infrastructural work had been done to get things ready. I was definitely looking forward to seeing it, if only so briefly, from the air again.

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!

One more thing...

These last two photos are for the benefit of my family in Beaver County, PA.

On our way back to Fiumicino (the airport in Rome) we passed this sign on the Autostrada:


I couldn’t get a very good photo of the town of Tarquini in the distance, but here it is:


Something tells me had we stopped we would have
found some very tasty bread! :)