Monday on Mykonos
Sep. 29th, 2009 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memelainaMonday, 28 September
Breakfast here in the marble palace is from 8am to 11am, so I barely made it in time. They cater to all nationalities and have not only Greek yogurt and honey, but sliced ham and cheese for the Germans and Scandanavians, eggs and bacon for the Brits, juice and rolls and sliced poundcake and such for the French and other more Continental folk. Best of all there was nice strong filtered coffee with a tiny pitcher of hot creamy milk to poor in it. We celebrated the end of breakfast by retiring to our own private terrace to lay in the sun and view the sea. Juanita, whose meds make sun anathema, lay under a blanket in the shade while Terry donned a bathing suit and then partially un-donned it to lay going from bronze to brown.
Eventually we took taxis into the town and wandered about the twisted lanes (there are no streets) for an hour or two. The Folklore Museum which was supposed to open at three, was actually closed until five-thirty. We headed for the harbor to buy tickets for tomorrows trip to Delos, but ended up at the waterside, but not the harbor and had to duck back into the winding alleyways to try to cut through. The guidebooks all say that tourists have to get lost in the maze that is Mykonos town, it's part of the charm of the island, but that charm's a little hard on a party with bad knees and swollen ankles. The town was laid out, or more likely just grew up, as a series of twisting lanes to foil the pirates who periodically attacked from the harbor. It probably worked. It did on us.
In any case, we found a sleepy cave of a taverna where the proprietor condescended to give us mezes and avgolemono soup in the middle of what should have been his afternoon nap. Crazy tourists! We ate wonderful gigantes (like giant lima beans cooked in tomato sauce) and dolmadakia (grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs and maybe a little cheese), and the wonderful Greek french fries cooked in olive oil. Eventually we found the taxi plaza (the only place cars are allowed) and went back to the hotel to sleep until dinner.
Sandra and I put off our naps to walk a few hundred feet down from our hotel to Plays Glatis beach and scope out the possibilities for dinner. On the corner of the road is Blue Myth with an indoor dining room full of open walls looking out on the beach. If you go down eleven uneven curving stone stairs to the beach, and then walk across the sand, there are three more restaurants all in a row. The all serve the same tasty Greek cuisine (with a few additional schnitzels for the Germans and pastas for the Italians, but the farther along you go the less expensive the prices and the more eager the handsome young men standing outside are to assure you of their restaurant's excellence and low prices. We accepted a 10% off card from Viva Mare, the last in line, and headed back to the hotel and our postponed afternoon naps.
When nine o'clock rolled around, we herded each other out the door and down the hill, helped Juanita to successfully negotiate the eleven steps and the soft sand and were welcomed into Viva Mare like lost relatives returned home for a prodigal's fatted lamb. There were carafes of a lovely house white wine, probably made by someone's neighbor in large plastic vats, there was lamb and pasta, and good old American-Greek saganaki (not flamed) along with small salty olives and plates of taromousalata and tsatziki to drip our bread. No pita (that too is mostly an American affectation) but slices of whole meal bread baked that day - crusty and slightly salty. I drank enough wine to want to sing, but my stodgy companions dissuaded me. We were the last customers and the incredibly early hour of midnight - it's truly the end of the season - and back up the beach and the eleven stairs to bed.
Does it look like all we do is eat? Well, in Mykonos at the end of the season (and if you aren't up for breaking plates, listening to loud bouzouki music, or finding uninhibited sexual companions for the night) there's not much else to do. So we are enjoying sun, food, and sleep - and tomorrow we head out for the sacred isle of Delos on, I dread to say it, a boat.
Breakfast here in the marble palace is from 8am to 11am, so I barely made it in time. They cater to all nationalities and have not only Greek yogurt and honey, but sliced ham and cheese for the Germans and Scandanavians, eggs and bacon for the Brits, juice and rolls and sliced poundcake and such for the French and other more Continental folk. Best of all there was nice strong filtered coffee with a tiny pitcher of hot creamy milk to poor in it. We celebrated the end of breakfast by retiring to our own private terrace to lay in the sun and view the sea. Juanita, whose meds make sun anathema, lay under a blanket in the shade while Terry donned a bathing suit and then partially un-donned it to lay going from bronze to brown.
Eventually we took taxis into the town and wandered about the twisted lanes (there are no streets) for an hour or two. The Folklore Museum which was supposed to open at three, was actually closed until five-thirty. We headed for the harbor to buy tickets for tomorrows trip to Delos, but ended up at the waterside, but not the harbor and had to duck back into the winding alleyways to try to cut through. The guidebooks all say that tourists have to get lost in the maze that is Mykonos town, it's part of the charm of the island, but that charm's a little hard on a party with bad knees and swollen ankles. The town was laid out, or more likely just grew up, as a series of twisting lanes to foil the pirates who periodically attacked from the harbor. It probably worked. It did on us.
In any case, we found a sleepy cave of a taverna where the proprietor condescended to give us mezes and avgolemono soup in the middle of what should have been his afternoon nap. Crazy tourists! We ate wonderful gigantes (like giant lima beans cooked in tomato sauce) and dolmadakia (grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs and maybe a little cheese), and the wonderful Greek french fries cooked in olive oil. Eventually we found the taxi plaza (the only place cars are allowed) and went back to the hotel to sleep until dinner.
Sandra and I put off our naps to walk a few hundred feet down from our hotel to Plays Glatis beach and scope out the possibilities for dinner. On the corner of the road is Blue Myth with an indoor dining room full of open walls looking out on the beach. If you go down eleven uneven curving stone stairs to the beach, and then walk across the sand, there are three more restaurants all in a row. The all serve the same tasty Greek cuisine (with a few additional schnitzels for the Germans and pastas for the Italians, but the farther along you go the less expensive the prices and the more eager the handsome young men standing outside are to assure you of their restaurant's excellence and low prices. We accepted a 10% off card from Viva Mare, the last in line, and headed back to the hotel and our postponed afternoon naps.
When nine o'clock rolled around, we herded each other out the door and down the hill, helped Juanita to successfully negotiate the eleven steps and the soft sand and were welcomed into Viva Mare like lost relatives returned home for a prodigal's fatted lamb. There were carafes of a lovely house white wine, probably made by someone's neighbor in large plastic vats, there was lamb and pasta, and good old American-Greek saganaki (not flamed) along with small salty olives and plates of taromousalata and tsatziki to drip our bread. No pita (that too is mostly an American affectation) but slices of whole meal bread baked that day - crusty and slightly salty. I drank enough wine to want to sing, but my stodgy companions dissuaded me. We were the last customers and the incredibly early hour of midnight - it's truly the end of the season - and back up the beach and the eleven stairs to bed.
Does it look like all we do is eat? Well, in Mykonos at the end of the season (and if you aren't up for breaking plates, listening to loud bouzouki music, or finding uninhibited sexual companions for the night) there's not much else to do. So we are enjoying sun, food, and sleep - and tomorrow we head out for the sacred isle of Delos on, I dread to say it, a boat.
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Date: 2009-09-30 12:44 am (UTC)I'm glad now that you're there you've gotten off to such a good start.
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Date: 2009-09-30 04:47 am (UTC)A boat? To Delos? I am superduper jealous. My favoritest mode of transport is probably boats. srsly. All kinds. I even love the huge Greek ferries, and the incredibly noisy Flying Dolphins. So, do you have a really small ferry, or what?