Discovering Mykonos

I thought they should have given me a discount on this tee shirt when I realized they misspelled Mykonos.  But Shirley said they have a different alphabet with some letters we don't have. So I bought it anyway... for the memories and the colours... not the spelling.

This was one of the rare days when we did not take a tour sold by our cruise ship.  We opted to do our own walking tour here.  Our cruise ship docked in the vicinity of the Ferry port on the map below.

We walked to the windmills in the lower left of the map... and back.  It gave us a pretty good feeling of the place.

This island is 40 sq. miles.  Mayne Island is just over 5 square miles... one-eighth the size.

Mykonos has a population of 10,000.  Mayne Island has about 1,100 people... one-nineth as many. 

I think there were ten of us today that started off together to see what we could just walking around. Doesn't the water look crystal clear?

It was on our list to swim in the Mediterranean... and near the end of our walking tour about half of our group went for a dip in this little sandy beach.  Some of the non swimmers have photos of us swimming around here... as well as me changing into my swimming trunks.

I made the mistake of not putting them on under my pants... so Shirley and Geri held up a towel between me and our friends so I had a little privacy to do the change.  The only thing we didn't factor in was the wind.  There was great laughter when the wind blew the towel up!

This is the land of blue and white.  We walked down a lot of streets like this, where the cement between the flat stones was painted white.

The one "must see" here was to find these famous ancient windmills.  We asked directions and it was only about a 20 minute walk from the centre of the town...this little town is also known as Chora.

There are apparently 16 such windmills on Mykonos... seven of which are on this hill overlooking the harbour.

Most of the windmills were built by the Venetians in the 16th century, but construction continued into the early 20th century.

They were primarily used to mill wheat... which helped provide income for a few of the villagers.

From these windmills one can get a pretty good view back into the village and the bay.  One windmill has been turned into a museum... but we didn't go in.  Hummmmm... missed it.

As we walked back thru town there were lots of interesting things to take pictures of.

Several churches.

It was before noon so this fabulous waterfront restaurant was pretty empty.  See "Little Venice" behind.

I can see why they called this part of Mykonos Mikri Venetia...  "Little Venice."

The famous pelican story.  We were told that in 1958 a fisherman found a wounded pelican off the coast of Mykonos and nursed it to health.  The pelican stayed on the island and the people loved the bird. Soon they named him Petros... he became the town mascot.  However in 1985 Petros was struck by a car and failed to recover.  The people were devastated.

Subsequently, three new pelicans now reside around the Chora on Mykonos. One of them has been given the name Petros.

Later we saw another lone pelican resting beside a house... so I asked him if I could take this close-up. He didn't mind.

His beak reminded me of Denny's... their restaurant interior colours are also pink and orange... colours that apparently stimulate the appetite. I went there once... and it didn't stimulate me!

Not all the shops were even open so early in the morning, but we found one place where Shirley got a skirt... and I got the tee shirt in beginning of this blog post.

We saw several churches...  most were small...

But this was the only church that was open, so we poked our head in the door and snapped this shot.

Very few streets could accommodate full size vehicles. This man had some water in the pickup  box so he picked up the truck so it would run out the back.

We passed a street where farmers had their bins of produce for sale.

The Greek flag.

Towards the end of the morning more shops were open.  Shirley is visiting with Don and Eliane Schaber.

I asked Don to give me his most "daring" pose... hang out over the water!

More blue and white houses...

and blue and white hotels.

But not everything was blue and white.

Some smaller boats...

 Some larger boats...

And a really large boat.  See the rectangle centre top on the rear of our cruse ship?  That is a rock climbing wall.  I rang the bell on the far right top corner of that wall.

One nice beach we didn't get to see s Elia Beach. There are lots of great beaches on Mykonos... this one is about 10 km from the main town.


Stumbled upon this really cool animated song by Fleet Foxes on Mykonos.  I enjoyed it so much I've watched it three times already.  When I saw this video had 5.8 million viewings I knew it was special. Hope you like it.

Have you been to Mykonos?  What was your favourite thing?