Europe: Mykonos

I landed in Patras one stiff neck and two tired eyes later at 4.30 in the morning, and with some difficulty managed to find the bus station to travel to Athens when most were just waking.

Athens is so different to every other city I have been to so far – wide streets, concrete everything and advertising covering every surface – that the only place I could vaguely compare it to is inner-city Sydney.

The streets however, have no names, and twist and wind as though they never want to be found, and the traffic follows a Darwinian law that could only compete with Thailand (although the Thai’s score points for precision driving, hands down).

I caught a bus to my hostel, purposely missed the stop when I saw the neighbourhood it was located in, and caught the metro to the hotel I would meet my group at the following morning instead. A few euros more for a room to myself was worth any amount of scrimping later (although I seem to be saying that a lot, I don’t think I’m very good at this budget backpacking business).

My island hopping group was a young, mostly Australian (including our leader, Renee) bunch who were all really lovely and fun. We travelled by bus to the port very early the next morning, in the rain, and endured a 6 hour ferry trip to the island of Myknonos. In the rain.

“Think of it this way, would you rather be sitting at work inside on a sunny day, or on a greek island in the rain?” someone said. We all looked at her dubiously. Sitting in our office didn’t cost us a fortune, but noone was willing to say it aloud.

By the time we arrived on the island, the wind was howling (the island’s nickname is ‘windonos’…did anyone tell us that before we got here? Nooooooooo) and it was still sprinkling with rain, though we must have done something right, as after our bus ride to ‘Paradise Beach’ the clouds dissappeared and it turned into a beautiful afternoon.

We did a short walking tour of town – a maze of whitewashed alleyts covered in bright flowers and green foilage – before trying out the Mousaka (a kind of Greek lasagna) at a local restaurant. A few local heros, namely two pink pelicans called Petros and Patra, also made a visit near our table.These guys walk int othe kitchen of the seafood restaurants in Mykonos and tap their beaks on the glass to get fresh fish – the locals love them.

Noone went out until well after midnight in Greece, so a few early drinks kept us going at a bar called ‘Rhapsody’ before heading onto the ‘Down Under’ bar for happy hour with the Aussies and podium dancing until the early hours of the morning at the Scandanavian Bar and Disco.

Because we were a big group the bartenderes kept giving us free shots, so it was the biggest cheap night out in a long time and so much fun, although it was wall to wall bodies and no air from about 1.30am onwards.

The following day was spent recovering at the yellow-sand beaches and getting lost within the maze of town streets for the afternoon. We had planned a quiet night at the Paradise Beach Bar (next to our bungalows) but when we arrived at 6pm and hundreds of bikini and speedo-clad bodies were dancing on the bar, and the DJ was pumping hits 2m from the beach-turned-dancefloor, we resigned ourselves to the fact it wouldn’t be a quiet one after all.

There were about four contiki group there so you can imagine how crazy it was. The bartenders were selling full bottles of spirits in ice buckets andhanding out more free shots to keep the girls dancing on the bar. So we kept dancing and had another cheap night.

We love Greece. We really do.

-Sarah