Day 1 - Barf Ferry
A transfer day! I woke up to a chilly windy day in Santorini. Stepping outside it was the first reminder that it's springtime in May, and a relief to have a brief respite from the scorching temperature. I arrived early to the port to jump on a ferry to Mykonos. Shuffling onto the ferry with the hundreds of other passengers dumping our bags in the cargo area and polite speed walking to find an available seat for the journey. Reaching the open sea, the windy day made itself known causing choppy waters and testing people's constitution. The rocking was quite intense, personally the rocking sent me right to sleep. But not everyone had the same reaction, there were few people barfing into the bags provided and several fainters drawing in the first aiders and any “are there any medics on board!” people.
Disembarking had its own challenges, most were gripping onto any handhold they could find while making the way to the cargo hold. My years of commuting on the London Underground has trained me for this moment. I call it train surfing, the aim of the game is to go as far as you can without resorting to grabbing any of the handholds. As my fellow passengers made shaky steps to the cargo, death gripping anything close, I confidently strolled along behind with relaxed knees absorbing the undulating deck. I'm such a smug prick.
Arriving at Mykonos I looked around for the available transport link to get me closer to my hotel in Mykonos Town. There was a 2 euro boat transfer but as is my tradition, I opted for walking, it's only 5 km! I do enjoy the personal responsibility of navigating by foot, it's not just because I’m cheap. By doing it this way (assuming it's not a ridiculous distance) you get the lay of the land. I also wasn't the only one doing it, there was a fellow backpacker doing the same route. I overtook him and made my way around the promenade and through the town. I picked a hotel instead of a hostel. There was only one hostel and it seemed to only have one massive dorm which I wasn't keen on.
So I splurged on a hotel, although it was at the top of a very steep hill on the outskirts of town. On scaling the hill and a few laps of the area ( got to another place that wasn't signposted), the backpacker I overtook showed up and was in the hotel next door. Had a brief chat, as I hadn't seen that hotel advertised on Booking.com, and he said he’d booked on an app called PriceLine. A whole world had opened up to me, the hotel next door was quite a bit cheaper and maybe a little higher spec, which irked me a bit. But for the future I've got some more options to check, rather than just having a look on Booking.com and HostelWorld.
I popped to the supermarket for the standard required bucket of greek yogurt. Getting back to the room, I had every intention of going down to the town and exploring, but the wind was howling and I'd cosied up in the bed and was catching up on TV, and that's where I stayed.
Day 2 - Fresh Pants
I woke up and went for a run! I’d woken up and surveyed the carnage of empty snack packaging and thought “that was a mistake”. No run was going to put a dent in the amount of crap I'd consumed while in my pants on the hotel bed watching Netflix. But it was the motivation I needed to get out the door. The idea of running in exotic locales is a good one, but you can't rely on the infrastructure being adequate in the place you turn up. The lack of any pedestrian paths had me running on the road hoping not to be run over, while tackling steep inclines and a strong head wind. Running my usual routes id come back feeling refreshed, but that seems to be alluding to me running on foreign soil so far, it's hard to enjoy the surroundings whilst also tracking cars and the people on phones driving them.
I didn't die and that's the main thing, and after showering off and seeing I was down to my last set of clean pants, the not so glamorous task of laundry had to be done. I didn't say i was going to do it, a quick google and i found a well reviewed place that i could drop it off that morning and collect that night. Generally I would do it myself but i was in a hotel and it didn't have the facilities like a hostel has.
The laundry place was right by the windmills, so I dropped off my travel soiled clothing and settled myself into a day of touristing in the bottom of the bag clothes that were least likely to have people turn up their noses at. I have no background knowledge for the windmills except, they are quite pretty but whatever their function in life was, has now been diluted for tourists like me to take photos of them.
Close by we also have Little Venice, which seems to be some building that jut out onto the sea. Again quite pretty, and not shy about trying to get a nicely composed photo of it, although that was a little difficult with the way the restaurants in front of it took up a lot of the walkway real estate with tables and chairs.
So far not getting hired by the Mykonos tourism board. But logging on to TripAdvisor and thinking these things as the best things to do would be a mistake. The best thing to do in Mykonos isn't a specific place to go to, it's just walking about in the labyrinth of the town. If you've read the posts from Santorini, I say a similar thing about just walking around the maze of streets and absorbing the atmosphere. It's much the same story here, except slightly different. We don't have the dramatic town hugging the cliff side, but my time exploring was more enjoyable. The town is larger and more maze-like, you truly get turned around and it took me several visits before I started getting my bearings. In the towns of Santorini only a few streets were filled with boutiques, restaurants and bars, then the rest was seemingly residential and less interesting to be in. In Mykonos every street piqued my interest, there’d be a trendy bar, an art gallery, a concept boutique store, it was residential but there'd be a crafted aesthetic to the street like brightly coloured stairs, doors and windows, luring you in to take a photo.
There were a lot of hard surfaces everywhere, the concreted floor was freshly painted with a white outlined irregular ovals imitating a stone floor and the buildings were all a pristine white. But there were also climbing plants everywhere, and in May they were in full bloom in bright pinks, purples and red, contrasting beautifully against the monochrome of the town.
After a few hours of hanging around town, I headed back to the hotel and did not chill. I saw that there was a gym nearby and got my first workout of the trip. My hopes of finding outdoor gyms everywhere was misplaced, even finding a fully equipped gym is a little difficult. At the moment I'm fitting it in where I can, which is not a lot, but with day passes to gyms for 10-15 euros a pop it's not something the budget allows me to do on the regular.
With more time to kill, I headed back to the town and looked around some more and grabbed some dinner, and collected my laundry, exulting in the clean clothes smell and grateful for fresh shorts that hadn't had litres of sweat pass through them.
Day 3 - Hiking Through a Super Club
I took some timeout and needed to plan where I was going next. Paros and Naxos had been recommended enthusiastically by other travellers I'd met but island life was beginning to wear on me a bit. I wasn't sure going to quieter islands was the right choice for me, I'd already been struggling to find things I wanted to do, and often found I would just end up walking about exploring aimlessly. But there's only so much that you can do, there's probably a ton of things to do, but without a car and reliable public transport a lot of things on offer were centred around cafes, relaxing on beaches, and going on a big night out. Things I like to do in moderation.
For those reasons I decided my next move would be onto the mainland and head to Athens. The last week was quite isolating, with being the only person in the hostel in Oia and then booking a hotel where meeting people is several factors more difficult. Going to a city I’d hopefully be able to scratch the social itch I was having.
The day was starting to get away from me and headed into town for some lunch. A massive duck bao, that I'd spotted the day before, never seen one so large, but was pretty satisfying. As hoisin sauce dripped down my face I was scrolling around Google Maps to see what I could fit into the remainder of the day.
I settled on walking over to the paradise beaches and seeing what the craic was. A not so fun 40 minute walk along a busy road with no footpath, oh well I was active and got my steps in. Paradise it turns out is quite a subjective concept, the bay the beaches settled in were truly beautiful, the back to back clubs and bars pumping out the bass, maybe wouldn't come under my definition. There was a trail between the bays on a nice rocky outcropping providing some nice views along the coast. The final beach I walked along had Club Tropicana, it basically took up the whole beach. It looked cool, coming from someone who hasn't been clubbing in years, and i couldn't probably be convinced to go, but being on my tod it didn't seem like something i was in the mood for.
Without stopping to really take in the club culture I headed back on foot to my hotel and more assured in my feeling of leaving the Greek Islands behind and making my way further north.