Greece-Mykonos (Day 120)

We got up early to catch our ferry from Rafina to Mykonos.  Luckily, Rick and Linda had gone down to the port the day before to pickup our tickets or we would have needed to get up an hour earlier.  We took the slower ferry for 25 euros each which saved us about 20 euros each at the cost of 3 hours.  Piraeus is the major port of Athens but we’d chose to go from Rafina because it is closer to the airport and less crazy than Piraeus.  Linda and I had made up a 2 week travel plan in December to go Mykonos, Santorini, Crete, Rhodes, Patmos, and then Kalymnos.  Our family would leave us on Kalymnos and fly back from there. Once we realized the reality of time constraints and ferry schedules and routes we cut out Crete so our planned route was Mykonos (1 night), Santorini (3), Rhodes (3), Patmos (2), and then Kalymnos (2).

It was a large ship we were on about the size of the one above.

We boarded and stored our luggage.

Then we headed up to the lounge coffee shop area and found 6 seats together.  We had a nice ride talking about family matters, catching up on things going on in the States, and talking about our trip.

Life boats hope we don’t need them.

Views from the front of the boat.

We went through a few other port towns before making it to Mykonos.

We got to Mykonos and it turned out our hotel had a shuttle from the port to the hotel which was great and we all got checked in at the Poseidon Hotel ($80 a night).

We had a problem at first that our room smelled of smoke so we switch quick which was lucky since there is no such thing as “non-smoking” in Greece.  The hotel had a nice pool but it was kind of chilly which surprised us.  First order of business was to pickup our ferry tickets for the next day to go to Santorini.

We got our first lunch in Greece.  We learned here they bring you bread whether you order it or not and charge you for it.  It was the most expensive meal we’d had on our whole trip so we had a little sticker shock at the 15 euro each ($22 each) bill.

After lunch we went for a little walk to find an old church.

We were in the port of Mykonos and it wasn’t that pretty.

We found the church in a cool spot overlooking the ocean.

 

We thinking about getting some ice cream until we saw the price and this pelican came waddling through the restaurant.

I guess the pink pelican is a famous resident of Santorini and the restaurant owner just let it waddle through.  We found it in an alley on the other side of the restaurant.

My mom petted it.

Anja petted it.

I tried to pet it but it ducked it’s head down and waddled at me.  I wasn’t sure how a pelican bite would feel and didn’t want to find out.

Luckily, I walk faster than a pelican.

Then it walked in a sweets show.  This business owner didn’t really want the pelican in his shop and tried to shoe it out with a broom but it didn’t want to go.

I’d had enough shopping and wondering around and wanted a nap as we’d had about 30 hours of pretty busy traveling without much sleep so we walked to the famous windmills.

My folks came too.  Unfortunately, Rick and Linda didn’t follow us and got lost enroute back to the hotel.  Regardless, we got up and headed to a taverna for sunset.

I again got sticker shock with our 44 euro bar tab for 3 drinks at the taverna.  Greece might be rough on the bank account.