Greek Island hopping

Update! By Monday, when we left Rome, we had 123,997 steps! That has to be enough to deserve a foot massage on the ship.

Mykonos! Thursday we awoke to a dock. We arrived in Mykonos sometime during the night. Our captain booked it so that we didn’t have to tender, we were able to dock in the port. That meant that we had only to take a short bus ride to town instead of getting on a tender boat and getting transferred. It was really windy in Mykonos and the tender boats were really bouncing around, so we were glad to have been able to walk off the ship. You certainly don’t feel any bouncing on a ship this size! The island is beautiful and not as hot as yesterday. The bouganvea were as big as I have ever seen. They were beautiful purples and oranges and the trunks were as big as oak trees! As we walked through town, Jan bought some soaps as gifts. She was standing outside a shop smelling the soaps she had purchased and the gentleman from the next shop asked to smell them also. He stood for a photo with Jan and then decided he had a better photo op. He went to his back room and brought out his musical instrument. I wish I could tell you the name of it. It looked like a long necked mandolin and played beautiful music and he sang! I am sure the instrument must have been an expensive one, the wood was gorgeous and it sounded amazing. Then he let Jan play. He said it wasn’t about customers, it was about friends. What a nice welcome! We walked around the shops and over to little Venice. The buildings are constructed right on the side of the ocean, so it gets that Venice look of the buildings coming right out of the water. We saw the windmills that used to power the island and had lunch at a taverna right on the water. We had dolmas and calamari and Greek salads with feta and ouzo and yogurt and honey and ever Greek thing we could think of. It was a wonderful meal! After lunch we meandered back through town. Having a large group, it was easy to get separated. Jan, Pete, Bill and Linda walked right into a big fat Greek wedding! The wedding party was right in the street and they had champagne and appetizers and danced with the locals. In Greece, the weddings parade through the streets and everyone is invited. Jan is just the one to join in!

After walking back through town and shopping a little more, Jan, Ron and I hopped a cab to the beach, just a couple of minutes away. That was a grand idea! The beach was almost deserted, we got a couple of lounges chairs under a palapa, swam in the Aegean Sea and sun ourselves! It was idyllic. I can’t wait for someone to ask me where I got my tan! “Oh, I don’t remember, maybe that little beach, where was it? Mykonos! I think that was it.”

Tonight we are cruising to Turkey! We are going to arrive in the afternoon and we have a tour scheduled. I think everyone is excite to see yet another country and culture, this one even more different from our own.