The cleaning folks knocked on our door at about 10:10.
I washed my face, and wet my hair enough to comb it, and dressed for breakfast. Robert wasn’t getting up, and I asked, “Coming to breakfast?”
Surprisingly, he said, “No. I’ll just get something around here later.”
I went up to the lobby as I wasn’t sure where breakfast was served, only to find out that the restaurant was down by the pool. The guy behind the desk was so nice though; he could have just told me to follow the signs to the restaurant, but he actually came out from behind the desk and took me almost all the way there. I had read several nice comments about the staff of this place on the Internet before we came, and I was finding it to be true. They really do understand customer service here.
There was a nice buffet spread for breakfast, and I had scrambled eggs, some fried meat of several varieties including ham and bacon, and some fresh bread, which I toasted. Some of the guys were there, Adam, Steve, Andrew, and David, each of them at tables for two, and I took a separate table next to Adam and Steve.
When I had finished, I asked if I could take a plate to my “husband” in the room, and they said, “Oh yes! Sure!” I asked if there were any to-go containers or glasses, and they said, “No, just take these plates. Take the glasses. And just leave them in your room when you’re done. The cleaning lady will just take it all away. Don’t worry about anything!” Again, such good customer service.
Robert was pleased to receive his “breakfast in bed,” and actually came out on the balcony to eat it. It was a little chilly, but we moved the table into the sun, and he ate while I started my postcards.
After that we went down to the pool area, and I sat up in the restaurant, out of the wind, and wrote out 28 post cards. My hand was a little tired at the end. Here is my typical post card:
Greetings from Greece! We arrived in Athens on Saturday. On Sunday, our group toured the ancient treasures of the city with the most amazing tour guide. She was so knowledgeable, and was a great storyteller, too.
On Monday, we hopped a ride on a Greek Isles-touring cruiseship whose first leg was from Athens to Mykonos, which is the island we’re on now. It’s incredibly beautiful here, especially on the view of the azure blue Aegean Sea from the little balcony of our room.
Tomorrow, we have a day trip to the city of Delos to visit the ancient ruins there.
Much love, John
While I wrote my post cards, Robert explored the place, checking out the path down to the beach, and then spent some time in the sauna and steam room available to us here. He checked in now and then to find me still in my labor of love.
After the cards, I caught up this journal to this point.
Back at the room, I shaved and showered, and Robert and I went up to the lobby to see if there was a place close enough to walk to to get some lunch, even though it was about 4:00. In the lobby, we stopped to check email on the lobby computer, and while doing so, Steve walked in from his day excursion into town.
He showed us some pictures on his digital camera that he’d taken while down there, some of the windmills, and some of his view of the sea from where he had eaten lunch. We asked the lady at the front desk about a place to walk to, and she told us about the first place where the bus stops on the way into town, which was about a 15-minute walk.
We did the walk, which was a little precarious with these very narrow roads, but pleasant in terms of temperature and length. We came upon a bakery, and stepped in to check it out. They had some very cool little pastries of many varieties, and then a case with some frozen things in it. There were these little things that looked like little milk cans, white about four-fifths of the way up, with the last fifth being chocolate. We got one of those to try, and it was absolutely delicious – like white chocolate over white cream ice cream. Yum.
We walked around the corner to see if there was a restaurant, and found this little tavern that was absolutely deserted. There was a board with the menu on it in the patio area, and we walked up to check it out. Someone came out, whom I imagine was the owner, and invited us to come to the door, and look at a menu.
“Oh, it’s different?”
“Yes, easy to see.”
“Oh, it’s easier to read,” we said.
“Bravo!” he said, very excitedly.
This man was instantly likable, and we liked the menu, too. While we decided, he brought some fresh bread, which had sesame seeds on it, and some delicious garlic butter. We decided to get just appetizers, and ordered Mythos beer, an order of “Mykonian Sausage,” two cucumber and tomato salads, and a small bottle of water.
He brought the beers pretty quickly, followed by one cucumber and tomato salad. It wasn’t clear to us if he thought we ordered just one, or if he had combined them both into one big bowl. At any rate, it was a big bowl, and plenty, so we ate it without commenting.
“I bring water out soon; it’s not too cold yet.” I thought it interesting that he was probably soaking the bottle in some ice rather than just bringing us some glasses with ice to pour the water over. Ice is always such drama abroad.
After a little bit, he brought the order of sausages out. “I hope you like. It has little bit funny flavor. Made only here on Mykonos with grass spice from the hills. I like it very much,” he said. He was so nice.
We tasted it and both loved it. He then brought out our water, which was still quite warm. I hate to think what it must have been like before he did whatever he did to it.
Our bill was Î15,50, and we paid it quickly to catch the bus, which we thought was at 5:45. Crossing the street to the sign, we saw that it was actually at 5:50, and we took advantage of the extra five minutes to slip back into the bakery for some dessert.
Robert got this thing that was made to look like a bird’s nest, complete with a little egg in it. I got something that looked like baklava, only in that it was made out of that phylo(sp?) dough. Robert’s choice was just all right. He said it tasted like shredded wheat, which is what I thought it looked like. Mine was delicious, and I shared it with him.
The bus was running behind, and before it came, a woman walked up to the stop, and asked us to take her picture. She was from Los Angeles, and we both thought a little “outdoorsy,” later in the conversation she mentioned a husband. Not that that impresses us.
She asked us how we’ve found the Greek people, and I told her that we’d had real good luck, and that that man right over there, pointing to the restaurant at which we’d just eaten, was very, very nice. “How about you?” I asked.
“Oh we’ve found them to be very, very rude, and short tempered. I mean they get angry just like that,” she said snapping her fingers. “A taxi driver started yelling at us, and another man started calling my sister awful names, I mean, like whore and…” I couldn’t hear the rest as we were boarding the bus, and she was still yammering. The more she talked, the more she became an “unreliable narrator” to me though with regards to these argumentative people she keeps running into. I started to think, “Yeah, everywhere you go, there you are.”
One of the first few shops we stopped in downtown had children’s books and stamps, two of the things I was looking for. They had several of the American children’s stories, in Greek of course, which is what I wanted, and we ended up choosing Cinderella, with Alice in Wonderland, and Jack in the Beanstalk coming in in the top five. We also bought 34 post card stamps at Î.65 each for a total of Î22.10.
We walked around, and ended up near the water, where we once again saw the LA lady, who was taking a picture of four guys sitting on the wall with the sea in the background. When she was done, we yelled, “Next,” and cashed in on the favor of taking her picture earlier.
We walked around the point hoping to see the windmills around the corner. Here, we found some public WCs, which we had been wondering about. It was interesting; they had one room, to the right with “Gentlemen” marked above the door. It contained only four urinals, which smelled so strongly of urine that I had to hold my breath while peeing. I hate that. The middle room was not marked at all, and had three or four stalls. And the room to the left was marked, “Women,” and I have no idea what that setup looked like. I couldn’t decided if the unmarked one was for men who needed more than a urinal could afford, or if it was supposed to be a unisex bathroom.
We continued around the corner we thought the windmills around, but did not find them there. There was, however, a cool building, one of those white buildings famous on the island that have what I think of as “igloo features.” They’re the white ones with the blue shutters that you always see on the sides of the hills facing the beautiful blue water in the pictures of Greece.
In this area, I took a picture of some rocks on the beach, with the water splashing over them, and the setting sun in the background. I also climbed up some stairs and took a picture of that white building from a balcony of another house. Robert took a picture of me sitting on a wall here, too, with the setting sun in the background.
We walked some more in this area, starting to work our way back to the bus, and around one corner came upon the windmills. We took a couple of pictures with the sun setting behind the windmills that reek of great art in our mind’s eye, but will probably come back bleached out.
In this area, we came across two dogs that looked like they were 69ing. Then we noticed as they continued to get frisky that they were both male dogs, and the wet, pink weenie of one of them was sticking out. After a couple more minutes, they were humping like mad men. I thought of the joke, “How do you separate the men from the boys in Greece?” With a crowbar – or perhaps, apropos in this case – with a fire hose. And who says homosexuality doesn’t occur in nature. It does on Mykonos, the gayest island in Greece.
We stopped at the grocery store once returning to the bus stop area while waiting for the bus. We bought two Amstel Lights, a bag of Cheetos, and a bag of Doritos, barbecue flavored for Î3,15.
We caught the 7:30 bus, and shortly out of the bus stop area, had a dramatic scene with two busses passing each other, or I should say trying to pass each other. There was an area where the road bowed out a little to let one vehicle move to the right a little as the road is not wide enough to accommodate both buses passing at the same time.
Both buses had gone too far, and our bus waited while the other one started backing up. All of a sudden this calamity started, and one of the buses was sounding this very weird noise that they can make happen, which sounded like noise a cat would make if being run over. The bus baking up slammed on its breaks.
From where I was sitting, I could see yet another bus behind that bus, but that was it. All of a sudden after the front bus had slammed on its brakes, out from behind it comes a person on a bicycle – probably about to have been crushed to death, and then the door of a little car opened, which was also between that bus and the one behind it. Obviously the driver of the front bus didn’t see either the cyclist or the little car.
That little car backed up some more, and the driver of the bus in the back got out of his bus, and gave signals to the front bus driver to let him know it was safe to keep backing up. During all this, our bus driver has his hands up in the air shaking them, and yelling stuff, in Greek of course. There was a lot of drama going on here. One of the passengers actually took a picture of this, with their flash going off as evidence.
Finally that front bus had backed up enough for us to pull to the right a little into the widened area, and it was able to pass by. After the car and that other bus passed, we were able to move back and proceed.
During this time, there was an absolutely beautiful sunset taking place over the mountain to our right. Unfortunately, with the several stops before ours, we did not make it home in time to get sunset pictures from our balcony.
All in all, it was a very relaxing, nice day.
I put a note on Adam’s door, which turned out to be Hector’s door, telling him to give us a shout before he headed out if he hadn’t already gone. We hadn’t heard from him by 10:30, so decided to head out on our own.
During this time I had consumed too much of the Canadian Club already for my own good, and was feeling no pain as we headed to the bus stop. We missed the 10:45 bus, evidently by just minutes, so had to wait for the 11:15.
We got downtown, and strolled through the maze trying to find the gay bars. We ended up at Porta’s as our first stop, and to our delight, found the entire group there. Let the party begin. I switched to beer, and promptly got shit-faced. It was wall-to-wall men in here.
Much later we move to another area where several bars, Pierro’s, Manto and Icaros, all face into an open area, that was just jammed packed with men. Adam clocked it with the description, “It’s like Spiritus Pizza (in P-Town) on steroids, and there’s no cars coming down the street every five minutes.”
We spent a lot of time during the night talking to two guys from the UK, Peter and Graham, who were quite fun.
At, I think, around 2:30AM, Robert and I walked, well Robert walked, and I staggered, to catch a taxi, stopping at a crepe place, where he had a fantastic crepe stuffed with egg, mushroom, cheese, and either onions or peppers, I think. Delicious, and alcohol-absorbing as well.
Our taxi ride cost Î4,50, and we stopped in the lobby to check out email at the empty computer station. I tried four times to login to AIM, but couldn’t type my password correctly. Bless my mess.