Mikonos is famous as the "party island" of the Agean and is an essential stop for every cruise liner. Our guide Joseph much prefers the smaller, quieter places the Galileo visits, but knows everyone cruising the Cyclades wants to tick off Mikonos on their list. He is also disgusted that the Galileo is not allowed in the main port because it has masts, and the rich mega-launch owners don't like hearing the noise from the rigging! So we berthed in the "cruise dock" marina and used the cheap "Sea Bus" to go to and from the town, about one kilometre away.
We woke up to see four cruise ships parked nearby. Welcome to Mikonos!
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| The little Sea-Bus, passing a few cruise ships. |
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| The streets of Mikonos are indeed crowded. |
The streets of the town were quite busy, but no worse than the streets of any busy city really.
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| The iconic Paraportiani Church. |
The weird lump of the Paraportiani Church is actually made up of five separate churches built beside and on top of each other! It looks quite different depending on where you view it from.
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| Only vehicles like this will fit through the streets! |
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| The beach looks pretty scrappy! In the background is the "Little Venice" area on the edge of the sea. |
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| The famous windmills of Mikonos. Maintained purely for snapshot purposes. |
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| They even have their own "Cyclades" Coca Cola. |
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| The path through Little Venice goes right through these restaurants. |
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| Another cruise ship, another mega-yacht. Both a common sight here. |
Our perfect weather continued today. Joseph gave us a guided tour through the narrow winding paths of the old town and out the other side to near the windmills. Although the main paths are crowded, at other times you can turn into a side street and find yourselves alone. We did not find the crowding as bad as we had been led to believe it would be.
Mikonos is famous as a party island, and it is thronged with young people looking for that party. It seems to be centred mainly on the beaches along the other coast, where there are beaches called "Paradise" and "Super Paradise" where (we are told) the dance music pumps out at high volume all night and into the dawn, and all sorts of immoral behaviour goes on!
Everyone was instructed to be on board no later than 6:00 am (tomorrow), ready to depart. We had a quiet night on the Galileo (of course).
