Paradise in Mykonos

My semester in Madrid ends within the first weekend of May, but I’m not ready to leave Europe yet. One of my roommates, Elyse, picked the beautiful island of Mykonos, Greece to celebrate her birthday so I was lucky enough to have a vacation-like adventure after finals. I was ecstatic to go to Greece, being one of those dreamed-of destinations since I was a little girl. But my trek to Mykonos was delayed as Elyse, my other roommate, Brie, and I were stuck for an additional two hours during our layover in Milan (don’t ever use EasyJet). I know, we were stuck in Italy, how horrible. Anyway, we still made it to Mykonos in time to enjoy a nice dinner in town before the sun went down. I fell in love with the island instantly. Walking through the blue and white buildings in town, I was reminded of Morocco. But it was very much Greek. I could tell by all the cute shops selling sandals, beachy jewelry, and white linen clothing.

Greek salads here are so fresh and good, it's unbelievable — Greek salads here are so fresh and good, it’s unbelievable

The narrow blue and white streets in town

What made our trip to Mykonos even more like a vacation was the fact that we were spending our five nights at a hotel. Paradise View Hotel to be exact. Mykonos doesn’t have hostels like other cities in Europe, but luckily we were paying the same price as a hostel while staying in a charming, family-owned hotel with great service, a pool, and a view of the ocean. Not a bad deal. Right down the hill from us was Paradise Beach (rightly named), which is one of the most popular beaches in Mykonos. When it’s in season – usually starting around June – the beach is filled with tourists who come to Mykonos to party. So we were a little early coming to Mykonos. I didn’t complain though because I noticed right away the small-town (or rather small-island) feel of Mykonos, and I was actually able to enjoy it without the crowds. And trust me, we were still able to party, as well as run into new friends on the island.

Our first full day in Mykonos we rented two ATV’s (which are these little motorcars). I hopped on the back of one of them – not trusting my driving skills – and we had a whole 24 hours to drive around the island. The roads were so little and there were no street signs, only stop signs and round-abouts. With our handy map from the ATV place, it wasn’t too hard navigating. There weren’t very many roads in the first place. Only once did we have a mishap and lost Elyse at a round-about. But when we turned around to find her we ended up finding a beautiful lookout where you could see town and the crystal blue ocean beyond it. Since we had our ATV’s, we decided to drive to one of the Northern beaches, Panormos. Panormos was beautiful and not too crowded. There was only one bar/restaurant right on the beach. While it was overpriced, we had the pleasure of having lunch and cocktails with our feet in the sand. What I really enjoyed was that there were white cushions available to lounge on at the beach. So we got a little nap while sunbathing (and we had forgotten to bring towels so thank god we had something to lay on).

For dinner, we drove back to town and ate on the waterfront. We ordered saganaki as an appetizer, which is this greek fried cheese dish that is absolutely delicious. After dinner we looked for a place just to get a drink or two, but of course that never goes as planned. First we dropped into a little bar and tried a shot of Greek’s infamous hard liquor, ouzo. My friends didn’t like it at all whereas I liked it despite its strong taste. It had a little sweetness to it which it made it easy to go down. Next, we checked out this bar that had a 2 for 1 drink deal (which is always sort of a scam since they make one drink the price of two drinks). Now I didn’t know it was normal for clowns to inhabit a bar, but at this bar there was in fact a clown making crude balloons for costumers (he made a little bear with a particular male organ on it for my friend). This clown definitely met the stereotype of being creepy but I had to admit he was pretty entertaining. After the clown bar, we decided to check out the infamous Scandinavian bars in town, which I’m pretty sure is actually just one big bar, despite its name. The place seemed more like a club than a bar with multi-colored lights flashing in the room, music bumping, a large dance floor in the center, not to mention they were open to letting people dance on the bar. I happened to still have my camera with me from the day so I thought, why not take some pictures? So I captured a great scene of my friends dancing with a 70-year-old man, who was jamming to the music with people who were less than half his age. Despite his age, he was ruling the dance floor. So, as you can imagine, our original plan of calling it an early night turned into us staying out until 4am. But it’s okay, we were in Mykonos.

The next day we decided to walk down the hill and check out Paradise Beach. Along the way, cute wall paintings directed us down the road, welcoming us to “paradise.” When we got to the beach, we came across several straw umbrellas and bright yellow incliners facing crystal blue water while bars lined the beach behind us. We decided that it was in fact paradise (although I wasn’t a fan of the fact that we had to pay 5 euro each to sit in a chair). While we lounged in our chairs, soaking up the sun, a girl who worked from the bar behind us came up to inform us that we would get free shots if we participated at this event that began at 3pm. We weren’t really sure what it was she was promoting but she said the word ‘free,’ so at three o’clock we headed up to a bar to find some spicy latino music and a man moving hips better than a girl can.

Turns out this man was a performer who was doing some kind of Zumba show at the bar, his goal being to grab spectators to participate. Elyse – having a Mexican heritage background – volunteered herself to dance salsa with him, which he was very impressed with. He proceeded to grab Brie and myself – who are not so skilled – and after that I did not leave the newly-made dance party for the rest of the day. It began with just Elyse and I stealing the stage with our new performer friend (Brie perferred to watch) and slowly people came to participate. We even began to attract a fairly decent audience, which only grew throughout the day, and more people from the crowd joined our dancing routine. We began to gain some popularity as well, making several new friends whom we happened to run into on the island the rest of the trip (I told you Mykonos was small). I didn’t think I could dance so much in one day but I just couldn’t stop. I had a blast.

Despite our dancing spree at the beach, we decided to return to the Scandinavian bars that night with some new Canadian friends we met. Elyse’s birthday was at midnight – we had to! Having a late night out again, we decided to have a lazy day back down at Paradise Beach the next afternoon (no dancing this time). At one point of the day we noticed that it was low tide. We spotted some people walking across the water to this spot where there was a flat rock ledge you could stand on. We decided to check it out. The water was clear and felt fresh on the skin. But it was a little colder than we thought, so we had to push ourselves to get all the way to the rocky shelf. Our Canadian friends ended up joining us, so our trek across the water (not to mention the rock was covered in spiky barnacles) ended up becoming a great group photo. From far away it looked like we were walking on water! And so was our accomplishment for the day.

Our next day was our last full day in Mykonos, so we decided to rent ATV’s again. We just loved those things. We started our day getting gyros (which are so good yet so cheap) and then headed to a beach on the southeastern side of the island. Kalo Livadi beach was much quieter than Paradise beach with only a mom and her kids and puppy inhabiting the beach besides us. It was nice to relax a little bit on Kalo Livadi, but then we were off to check out one more beach, Super Paradise. Super Paradise, like Paradise Beach, is a party beach. On our way to Super Paradise we drove through isolated areas with scenic views, cute all-white homes, and a few small empty lots that were homes to cows and horses. Driving through Mykonos on the ATV’s was something I would miss. Upon arriving at Super Paradise we noticed it wasn’t too populated besides a few people at the main bar playing popular hits (it was off-season). While we laid in the sand we spotted several lounging spots with full over-hangs lining the beach. We could only imagine how this beach was when it was actually in-season.

As the day started to reach an end we decided to have one last dinner in town on the water front. I was going to miss Greece’s delicious, fresh food. While we planned to have one night of beauty sleep, our new friends convinced us to have a last night out in Mykonos (we rightfully called ourselves “team no-sleep”). I had to admit I was feeling sentimental leaving Mykonos and its cute little streets, excessive amount of stray cats, and the many new friends we made – including the clown, which I’m pretty sure we ran into again our last night in Mykonos. The next day we barely caught our flight in the smallest airport in the world (there was only one security line). I was sad to leave Mykonos but I looked forward to the two restful days back in Madrid before going on my very last trip. Budapest, here I come.