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Monday November 26th, 2012: Mykonos, Greece
Bob: Having arranged with Jim and Susan to walk around Mykonos together, we met them for breakfast in the dining room and set off for town directly afterwards. We could follow the beach for the first part of our way to town, but ultimately had to climb up to the shoreside drive and walk along the shoulders. That was fine as long as the road HAD shoulders, but quite frequently they were lacking. Drivers were very good about moving over so as to not hit us, but if we had traffic on both sides of the road in addition to our foursome, that became sticky. |
Monika: This was our first time to see Mykonos. As is our wont, just after sunrise we repaired to the upper deck and watched as the Crown Princess sailed past the famous windmills of Mykonos and into the cruise terminal. Jim and Susan were going to walk around and since that was exactly what we wanted to do and we genuinely enjoyed their company and had similar tastes in what we wanted to do, we had arranged to have breakfast together and then be on our way. The port lecturer had discouraged us from walking into town, but I had looked at the road from the ship and it looked eminently walkable so we all decided to walk. It was really a very pleasant walk. For the first part we walked on the beach. As we came up to the street I noted a little grocery store and filed the information. The street was really quite walkable. There were one or two places were it was getting narrow and we had to watch for cars or buses coming around a blind curve. But the traffic was light and I never really felt that we were in any danger. |
Bob: But we arrived in town of Mykonos unscathed and proceeded to wander up, down, and sideways along the narrow, stone-paved streets. I was in particular looking for a Post Office to purchase stamps to send postcards back to the USA, and after dint of much searching and asking locals for directions we finally found one. Each stamp cost .78 Euro, but I was happy to pay that and finally get the postcards that I had been carrying in my pockets for the last several days off to their destinations! |
Monika: The little town of Mykonos resembled Fira on Santorini in that the streets were narrow, the houses white, and there were lots of touristy things. There were beautiful little fountains and interesting doors. But whereas the streets in Fira were gridlike, here they went every which way and usually ended at a little church. The map provided by the ship was useless as most of those maps usually were. We wanted to find a post office and got many different directions from the locals: first left, then third right; next one said first right then second left etc... None of the streets was a through street, so when we finally came upon the post office we were truly surprised. We got the stamps and mailed the cards with Susan recording the action. |
Bob: Our next goal was to see the row of old windmills, which is kind of a signature trademark for Mykonos. We kept getting turned around and ended up overshooting our goal a bit, but we did get there eventually and they were quite pretty. By then we were all hungry enough for lunch, and tried walking back through the middle of town to find a suitable cafe or restaurant. Our first attempt at walking through town ended in failure as after 15-20 minutes or walking we came back to exactly the same church and realized we had somehow wandered in a complete circle! Arrrgh! Jim finally asked for directions and we successfully exitted the maze and made it back to the waterfront area where most of the eateries were located. Wandering along, we cased out the various restaurants, bars, and cafes until we found one that seemed to offer authentic Greek cuisine, and then settled in for a nice, relaxing lunch. |
Monika: Our next stop were the famous windmills of Mykonos. We had seen them from the ship on the other side of the town. So off we went in the general direction of "out of town". When we thought we had gotten out of the tourist area we turned towards the sea and there they were, the six famous windmills. We took all the pictures we wanted and then turned back towards the town to find a place to eat. Jim and Susan like to eat in local places. So Jim asked and was given directions to find local eateries. We headed back into the maze of streets taking pictures of a lot of little churches along the way. When we came back to one we had seen before, it was remarkable, because it was the only "Catholic" church. We had actually gone in a circle without noticing it. So now we tried to figure out where we needed to walk differently and finally made did make it to the main waterfront. There were several restaurants there, and we picked on that looked like it had authentic Greek food. Bob and I had each a Gyro and it was really good. |
Bob: One of the joys of finding companionable folks is having interesting conversations during a meal. In this case, we enjoyed a nice view out over the harbor as we discussed topics like the lack of etiquette among the younger generation and how to deal with that. Sometimes it is just reassuring to know that other parents had the same or similar issues with their offspring or relatives. |
Monika: We headed back into the maze of streets taking pictures of a lot of little churches. We also walked back past the famous pink swan who was sunning himself by the town hall and enjoyed having his picture taken. |
Bob: Our final goal for the day was finding a ceramic spoon rest at a store we had passed on our journey into town. Retracing our steps, we found the store plus a shop specializing in handcrafted wood implements just across the street. Monika ended up with her spoon rest plus a rice-stirrer carved from olive tree wood, and I purchased a cute olive fork with four tines set in a square, also carved from olive wood. Then we called it quits for the day and walked back to the ship. Monika did, however, zip back out to the nearby grocery store for wine, Coca-Cola, and pretzels for me, bless her heart. The "pretzel" sticks were definitely made with a different recipe than standard American pretzels in that the dough contained malt, yeast, and vegetable oil in addition to the wheat flour, and about 1/2 of the salt that normally covers a pretzel was replaced with sesame seeds. The net result was a slightly less crisp but considerably more tasty pretzel. I especially liked having less salt and the additional flavor of sesame seeds. Neat! |
Monika: After lunch we all were somewhat tired and decided we had seen enough. We slowly walked back past the little marina of fishing boats to the ship and got there around 3PM. Bob was tired and the knee had injured on the hike to Oia was acting up, so he decided to lay down. I had another mission. I wanted to go to the little supermarket I had spied and see what I could get. I always enjoy these little stores in a foreign country. I found a nice bottle of wine, some beer and to my surprise also pretzels. Since Bob really likes to snack on pretzels I bought two bags for him and a large bottle of coke. Now we were well supplied for the rest of the cruise and I walked with my treasures back to the ship. This being Princess I had no problem bringing everything on board. I had a glass of the wine and relaxed until it was time for dinner. |
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