Mykonos, Greece

On our cruise from Athens we landed at six ports: five in the Aegean Sea and one in the Sea of Crete. Not a Mediterranean cruise at all! I'm reflecting on our experience at each port, and starting with the port we least enjoyed: Mykonos.

Before you challenge me, I recognise that (a) everyone's experience is different, (b) we were there for 24 hours and I know from our Darwin experience that one has to spend years in a location to get a true sense of place, and (c) it's still close to peak summer season, and time of year does affect tourist experience.

The weather was lovely but the tourist numbers were not. Yes, yes, I know I'm one of them!

Our local guide Amaryllis told us that the summer tourist season used to be from June to September. Now it's from March to November. 30 million tourists visit Greece every year ... and it seemed to us that most of them were on Mykonos. Amaryllis started off by saying, 'Now I know that you all think of Mykonos as the party island ...' and that pretty much sums it up. It was packed with young tourists in bikinis and dragging suitcases (lots of ferries come and go), and as charming as the old town's winding streets are, they are difficult to navigate when you're shuffling along in a crowd.

My other main gripe was that it was full — FULL — of shops. Trendy, cute dress shops, including the international designers that you find in every airport and shopping mall. In fact I'd say that 60% of all buildings were dress shops (who buys all these clothes?), 35% were jewellery shops (ditto), and 5% were souvenir shops. Of course there are heaps of restaurants, but I have no objections to heaps of restaurants with lovely outdoor dining areas.

But the architecture of Mykonos is picturesque and the flowers are bright against the white walls.

Mykonos is an island in the Cyclades group. The word Cyclades means to encircle; the Cycladic islands encircle the sacred island of Delos where Apollo and Artemis were born. Cycladic architecture has a maximum of two storeys, flat roofs, white walls and blue or red trim. The Cycladic islands are rich in limestone and marble, and in the past, people used limestone to make whitewash for their walls. In 1938, the dictator Metaxis decreed that everyone whitewash their walls to combat an outbreak of cholera. Not sure how successful that was (saved by the war!), but nowadays people use paint and white is a choice to conform to Cycladic style rather than a decree.

The houses in the old city are tiny, quite dark inside and connected to neighbours' houses. Pirates were a huge problem for these island communities in the past and the port cities all had means to defend their population against invaders. By having houses that connect with one another, people could run away quite easily by moving from roof to roof.

The most famous pirate in all the islands was Barbarossa, an Ottoman (Turkish) pirate, who sacked towns and raided islands and incited fear everywhere he went. His Greek legacy appears to be hundreds of bars and restaurants called Barbarossa. A sort of Ned Kelly, perhaps?

People building houses frequently borrowed pieces of marble from old temples and old buildings on the island. It wasn't until the late 1800s and early 1900s that any value was placed on all that old marble lying around. As a result, many local houses casually incorporate ancient marble columns from 500 BC. In jaunty Greek contrast, the ceilings are built from wooden beams (cypress trees are common), reeds and sea grass for insulation.

Mykonos is also called the 'Island of the Winds'. Amaryllis, who was born on Mykonos and still lives here, told us that the wind blows 300 days of the year. Mykonos is such a windy island that it's dotted with windmills. In the past, people would bring their barley and wheat to the island to have it ground by the mills.

What was a huge surprise to me was how very, very dry the Cycladic islands are. (We went to three: Mykonos, Paros, Santorini, and they are all parched.) Mykonos gets about 350 mm of rain per year. The countryside is really dry. More on that as we get to other islands.

So why did Mykonos become such a famous island?

According to Amaryllis: (1) it's close to Delos island, one of the most important mythological, historical and archaeological sites in Greece — but since no one is allowed to live on Delos, the closest island for all those visiting archaeologists and historians was Mykonos, (2) the 'jet set' (yep, those oldsters) 'discovered' Mykonos in the 1960s and 70s, and (3) the nature of the locals themselves. For hundreds of years, Mykonians set out across the sea to trade and fish, and returned home with stories of the wider world. This made them more receptive, according to Amaryllis, to visitors on their island.

Historically (I'll be brief) Mykonos was ruled by the Greeks, then the Romans (as described before) and then became part of the Byzantine empire. At the end of the 1300s, it fell under Venetian rule. Little Venice in Mykonos is the mega-picturesque section of the town where the colourful houses were built in Venetian style with access from the water. People lived here for centuries but now the houses are all cocktail bars, with a view of the setting sun.

One other architectural legacy from the Venetians are the pigeon houses on the roofs. Apparently the Venetians loved to eat pigeon, so they brought them to the island and built pigeon lofts on the corners of their houses. The architectural tradition has continued, sans pigeons. Oh, and of course — pasta.

In the Greek Orthodox religion, cremation is not permitted. So wealthier families have their own family chapels, where family members are buried and celebrated once a year. To accommodate additional corpses, bones are popped into compact boxes and space is thus made for newcomers. Reminds me of the family mausoleums in the city of the dead in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, although the Greek family chapels are a little more homespun. https://www.julie-anne.online/post/buenos-aires-2

Amaryllis said that Mykonos is now a favourite location for flowing dress photography. Yes, apparently that's a thing. Ken had to drag me away from my fascination with this curious pursuit. We saw a few wedding parties but these were not parties. These were young-ish women having photos taken of themselves in their flowing gowns.

Greeks have always been a sea-going nation, and with such poor soil and low rainfall in the islands, people have depended heavily on fishing for their own food and for commerce. Coupled with the fact that almost all Greeks are Orthodox and deeply religious, each port has a church dedicated to Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors and seamen. He's also the patron saint of Greece, which says it all. On the foreshore of every port, the church is instantly recognisable: white with a blue-domed roof.

We eventually gave up on the crowds and just went to the beach. Not a bad way to spend a Greek island afternoon.

I did taste my first ever pomegranate gelato in Mykonos. It became my favourite flavour in Greece. Thanks, Mykonos, I'll give you that. Helpful hint: Eat it quickly or it melts and drips on clothes, legs, etc. and looks like blood. I can attest to this.

My ranking of our Mykonos experience, relative to the other ports: 6th out of 6.

More to come.