And You Will Go to Mykonos

We all woke up before the crack of dawn to get ourselves down to the port where we would be catching a ferry from Athens to the island of Mykonos. This involved a 5:30am train ride from our hostel which turned out to be the closest I have come to getting mugged on my whole trip (touch wood- I still have a month left).

Sam and I had our packs on and Shereen and Ray where wheeling their suitcases, so we all stood in the space by the doors for the ride, along with one other older gentleman who was by himself and had a few different pieces of luggage of various size. About 3 stops from the end of the line, a group of about 6 men all piled on and started trying to take the man's bags. But it what was strange was when I say "take" that's not really correct... They were merely lifting the bags and holding them, not trying to pull them off him with any actual force. It was like watching a really bad play where people were supposed to be fighting over something but it didn't look realistic. Anyway, the man was understandably getting distraught and I was trying to push these people off him and away from his things. My friends were doing the same and one or two other people on the train started yelling at them in Greek, and when we arrived at the next stop they all just dropped what they were doing and got off the train. After they had left someone on the train said, "they were thieves, make sure they didn't take anything". Well thank you Captain Obvious, but your help would have been better a couple of minutes ago. We asked the older guy if he was ok and if he had everything. Despite his passport being in his breast pocket for all to see, they hadn't taken anything from him. We realised that they weren't really targeting the guy, they were trying to distract us. Sam had seen one man's hand try to get in Ray's handbag but he slapped it away. None of us had anything taken because the rest of us had everything padlocked and protected, but it wasn't the greatest start to the day.

The next step of the journey was not much better. We had gotten our ferry tickets the day before and discussed which one we would take. Price was an issue for Sam, and he wanted to take the longer ferry that was €20 cheaper. Ray said she would keep him company and since Shereen and I would only have arrived and had to wait for them anyway, I decided that I could manage on the boat for a bit longer. Unfortunately this resulted in a 5 1/2 hr ferry ride, with little to no food, uncomfortable chairs, freezing air conditioning and nothing to do.

When we did finally arrive we were greeted by our guest house manager who drove us to our accommodations in the old port of Mykonos. We were staying right by the famous windmills on the island, and whilst we had to take a bus every time we went to the beach, I really loved being in the little village.

After we had settled in, we decided to go and see Sam at his hostel by the beach. We let him know we were coming and hopped on the bus to make our way out to the beach. Sam said he would be by the pool at the hostel, and I thought I spied him when we arrived but Ray laughed at me saying that couldn't be him, so we decided to check out the beach and see if he was there. We got out to the end of the beach which was the only place you didn't have to pay to sit, and we still hadn't seen Sam. Instead we had seen a LOT of old naked men and came to the conclusion that it maybe this wasn't the place we wanted to spend the afternoon. We walked back to the hostel and of course it was Sam that I originally spotted! His hair had just grown so much in the past month that Ray didn't recognize him.

We went for a short swim and hung out at Sam's hostel eating souvlaki. Sam also introduced us to Rhys and Georgia who were friends travelling together from Melbourne, also staying at his hostel.

We went back to our accommodation and Ray went to meet her friend Alana for dinner. Shereen and I went and got crepes and gelato for dinner and spent a little time walking around and enjoying the vibrant nightlife in the old port.

And thus ends our first day in Mykonos. More next time xx