Travel Guide: Mykonos

In full transparency, I feel a little awkward calling these travel posts “guides.” They’re more like my personal diary, and I have no problem reminding everyone that I’m no travel expert.To be honest this is more like a “two days in Mykonos” kind of post. And even for a tiny island, it’s hard to see it all.

If you read this post about our Italy travel, these two days in Mykonos were the next leg in our Europe trip. Mykonos is a tiny Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Known for it’s summer party scene, we only stayed for a short 48 hours and  made the most of it – including having some unexpected surprises.

DAY 3 – Travel

After waking up on our last day in Italy, we arrived back at Fiumicino airport in Rome before 6 a.m. to catch a direct flight to Mykonos. The flight is about two hours and we booked our flight with Blue Panorama. I made terribly rookie mistake that cost me ¢50: Apparently, I purchased my ticket using my name as listed on my billing information, not my passport. Basically, I was missing my three-letter middle name… I had to get it adjusted, but, thankfully, I still caught the flight on time. To be honest, that was probably the worst thing  that happened on this trip, which I’m so very grateful for.

We took a car from the airport to our hotel – the sweet, and perfectly located hotel, Votsalaki Resort.  The staff couldn’t have been friendlier – we went straight to the pool where the bartenders walked over and introduce themselves. Such helpful people, who kindly showed us the outdoor gym that for some reason we thought we’d actually use…? Jokes. We spent the remainder of the afternoon eating and having drinks by the pool.

Just a quick five-minute walk away is Tropicana Beach Club. We were completely caught off guard, but this strip of clubs is basically like Vegas on the beach. It’s loud and messy but the drinks are good and they have more tables to dance on than you can count. Of course, we stayed there for the remainder of the evening.

DAY 4

The next morning, we woke up early and took a cab to one of the island’s ports where we jumped on the sailboat we charted for the day. After a last-minute cancellation from a different company, we booked the day trip with Mykonos Sailing. The trip began around 9 a.m., where we started boating around the island, learning about the different beaches and coasts. Side note – It’s very windy in Mykonos. I mean, we’re from the “windy city,” but Chicago has got nothing on this”windy island.”

Before lunch, we docked in a desolate spot and continued to drink and sunbathe while the captain and co-captain prepared lunch. Again, we were clueless as to what to expect, but out from this tiny boat kitchen came one of the most beautiful meals I’ve ever had prepared for me. After lunch, it was time for yogurt and honey and a bottle of prosecco. So content, so grateful, so happy…

At some point on our way back, our captains – which were the sweetest, most professional guys – decided to cast sail and turn off our engine. But the wind was so bad and the sea so strong, the sail came down, but the engine didn’t come back on. In a sweet effort to not frighten us, they didn’t tell us that, of course. But, we started to catch on pretty quickly. Without getting into the details – we kept drifting further from shore, lost a few kitchen dishes and I had just a minor freak out. But after a couple of hours of bobbing around in the sea, a mechanic on another boat hoped on James Bond style and fixed us right up.

By the time we made it back to the dock, it was nearly 7 p.m., four hours after we intended to get off it. The owner kindly let us stay on the boat as long as we wanted, so we kept popping bottles to celebrate and probably drank the boat dry. We made friends with the captains, watched the sunset on the boat and realized that the things that happen unexpectedly really do make the best memories. By far, that day was probably the one we’ll remember most from the trip.

I can’t imagine being stuck in this situation with anyone else other than the girls I traveled with. I was amazed at how calm and unphased they were being in that situation. They kept me so calm, and we all knew we couldn’t get worked up over something we had no control over. I’m sure their demeanor only helped the captains who were doing everything in their power to get us back to shore. Kudos to them! Shit happens, and if you’re going to get stuck out at sea, you’d want it to happen with these two guys. They kept great care of us and couldn’t have been more professional. Clearly we were on Cloud 9 after reaching land, so we quickly changed and headed back down to the beach to dance.

I’ll be writing about the last, and longest, leg of trip – Santorini, next!