Mykonos Greece
As I told you last week, we traveled to Greece in late May. After spending a few days in Athens, we wanted to visit one of the Greek islands, so we chose Mykonos. To get from Athens to Mykonos we chose to use the SeaJet service, instead of flying. Sea Jet is a high-speed ferry service that stops at many of the islands.
The first tip about the SeaJet is to make sure to book your tickets in advance. We had done that and seeing the line to purchase tickets made me very happy that we had. That also allowed us to sit together, and I heard others mention that they did not get to sit together since they didn’t purchase tickets in advance. We also bought the club level seats which gave us seats and a table for our journey. There is a cabin for a general ticket along with a platinum level seat that was similar to an airline seat. The club level seats were definitely the way to go, with basically a small glass wall separating them from the more expensive platinum seats, all on the same level of the ship.
SeaJet was also what I would call organized chaos! When you board (at the same time as vehicles are boarding), you place your luggage in a “pile” next to a sign for the island that you are going to. And it really is a pile!! When you get off, it is honestly quite difficult to get your luggage since there was so much piled together. But the SeaJet was a cool way to travel and took about 3 hours to get to Mykonos (with 2 stops before ours). One other note is that if anyone in your group gets seasick, make sure to take Dramamine (or some other form of medication) before you board. The day of our trip was very windy, and the sea was rough. I didn’t find it too rocky, but others might and better be safe than sorry!
One we arrived in Mykonos, we met our prearranged driver (again arranged through our favorite travel planning service) and made our way to our hotel, the Acrogiali Beach Hotel. This hotel was great…the rooms, the free breakfast, the service and right on the beach! It is a very small beach, and many people camp out for the day in typical European beach fashion – on padded chairs that are all in rows with umbrellas, but it was a great option for a beach hotel. I should write an entire blog about going to the beach in Europe vs what we in the US are used to doing – with the exception of Miami, which has both styles of beaching. The cove where our hotel was located was quite small, but beautiful. This is what I discovered about Mykonos (and in talking to people who have been to other Greek Islands – it’s mostly the same,) is that the seems to be how most of the hotels are situated that are near the water, in coves with a small beach. One nice thing about our hotel is that there was no extra charge for the chairs and towels at the beach, during our stay. This is not always the case at European beaches (or again, Miami,) where you have to pay for your chair and umbrella – in some cases the closer to the water the more you pay. I have even seen it where you can reserve your chair based on row back from the water.
We spent two full days on Mykonos and on the first afternoon, we made our way to the old town/port area. I should point out that while on Mykonos we arranged with our local driver to continue to offer transportation services for us – we were able to text them over WhatsApp and have them pick us up and drop us off whenever we were ready – it was convenient if not cheap. But there are only 30 taxis on Mykonos and with 4 cruise ships in port, no availability. And of course, any of the hotels could also arrange transportation from guests. So back to the Old Port, It is a very beautiful old town area with lots of narrow streets with clothing shops, jewelry shops, souvenir shops and restaurants and bars. You could definitely spend a ton of time exploring all these shops and it wasn’t too crowded the day we were there but if there are a lot of cruise ships in port, it could get very crowded!
We also spent time in Little Venice which is an area of buildings that are right on the water (just like they are built in Venice). We spent some time at a bar having a cocktail to look at the water and the buildings right near that area. We then made our way to the windmills at the top of the hill. They were very cool and were used in the 16th century for grinding grain. It was also a great view at the top of the hill of all of the old town and the old port of Mykonos.
Finally, we made our way back to the port area and found a restaurant to have dinner. Again, it was traditional Greek food, and my nephew had a fish the size of the table which he said was very good! Not a shortage of good food or restaurants in Mykonos! I forgot to mention on our first night in Mykonos that we had dinner at Phos Restaurant in the Nissaki Boutique Hotel which was just a short walk from our hotel. It was quite an upscale dining experience for the small island. And it was amazing. The hotel was situated in another cove with beach bars and other hotels. Again, typical of the island. The food and service were wonderful.
We spent our second day just hanging out on the beach. Like I said, it was a small beach and not a lot to do (even not a lot of walking to be done), but we did enjoy the island overall. There are many islands that are part of Greece and one of the best ways to see them all may be to take a cruise so you can hit many more of the islands. We also heard that both Crete and Rhodes are much bigger islands if you want to explore. Having the beach break in the middle of our trip was a great way to decompress a bit from hectic Athens and in prep for our next leg in Rome and all the walking that laid ahead for us.
One last note on Greece, especially for the islands. We were there at the end of May – which is really just the beginning of their season. Many of our restaurant servers and other staff told us that they had just arrived to start their season the first week of May. So, we were lucky enough to be there before things got summer crazy. This is something you should always look at when planning trips – timing of the busy seasons and what kind of crowds to expect.
OPA!
#treeknows
