Moseying around Mykonos

by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum Online Producer

I was in two minds about writing a post on Mykonos…. I’ve heard from several sources that it seemed from this blog as if we are all holidaying and partying and having the time of our lives on the Zagora Archaeological Project.

Well, we are having the time of our lives, that is true. But most of the time, we are working very very hard. Sometimes we feel so exhausted, it is difficult to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Last weekend we had the only full weekend we will have off during the six weeks of this field season. All the other weeks, we work all day Monday to Friday and a half day on Saturday.

So, as I mentioned in the previous post here, two colleagues, Rudy Alagich and Paul Donnelly, and I decided to visit the archaeological site of Delos. It is not possible to stay overnight there, so we went to Mykonos in order to visit Delos from there by ferry.

So, to Mykonos we went from Andros on Friday night, 16 November 2012, and made a trip to Delos on Saturday. There was only one ferry to Delos from Mykonos on Saturday at 10am, and it returned at 1pm. So the rest of the time, we moseyed around Mykonos.

I’d heard Mykonos was a busy, bustling, thriving tourist destination with a raging night-life – which is very attractive to others but not so to me.

However, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the island. The architecture of the white-washed houses with their brightly coloured doors and stair rails, and festooned with vivid bougainvillea, was charming and lovely. We enjoyed meandering around the narrow curving paved streets (even if we kept curving back on ourselves, not knowing quite where we were….) We found Mykonos remarkably unspoilt, with little discernible development to mar the charming village nature of the place.

There were very few tourists about now that the weather is getting cooler. Much of the time we felt we had the island to ourselves. But maybe that was because we went out early each morning and it seems most of the rest of the people didn’t venture out till 10 or 11am.

Also, being off season, we were able to book excellent, reasonably-priced rooms at the Leto Hotel from the ferry, while on our way to Mykonos.

Anyhow, here are a few pictures to give you a taste of the island. Well, more than a few. For someone who wasn’t too keen originally to visit Mykonos, I sure went overboard with the number of photos I took.