Thus began a week or so with five of us flying out to Greece, there picking up regular ferries to hop around five Greek islands before returning to Athens and flying home. We took backpacks but no tents and spent the entire time sleeping outdoors in dedicated sites. It never rained, fortunately.

I knew two of the other four people who went on the trip: Jason Roberts (who organised most of it) and Matthew Kopinski. The other two were friends of Jason’s but their names escape me.

Travelling outside the country without parents was exciting, from the flight there to picking up the various ferries jumping between island and island and finding the correct buses to get us to camp sites. Ferry travel was very memorable for the uniformly dreadful conditions of the toilets on board and the extreme tilt most of them had when battered by the wind.

One memory from one of the ferry trips was finding ourselves seated behind what appeared to be gorgeous Greek women, trying to encourage each other to approach them, only to have one turn around and us all catch sight of a pretty thick moustache.

The five islands we hit were Ios, Naxos, Paros, Syros, and Mykonos.

The island featured in the image below holds a special memory for me as one evening before heading out to the nearby bars and clubs we experienced an earthquake. It’s the only earthquake I’ve ever felt and the best way I’ve got to describe it is like a juggernaut thundering past your room only in complete silence; there were vibrations and a feeling of swaying from side to side but no noise at all. It was interesting to see how many other people in the camp site suddenly looked around at each other with the same expression of “Was that a…?” on their faces.

Other memories of the Greek islands holiday:

• Waking up with a rash on my leg one morning I had to visit the local hospital as it was Sunday and there was nothing else available. There, in a room with the door open to other people in the waiting room and in front of a group of three doctors, all smoking, I was gestured to drop my trousers and then given a prescription without a word. I took my pills. I went out drinking. Later that night I don’t remember very much at all other than being told to get off the bar I was laying on by a barman and walking back to the camp site on my own, pausing for a while on the beach to stare at the Milky Way. On my return to England my doctor informed me that I’d been prescribed strong tranquiliser. For insect bites.
• One morning I awoke to find a woman undressing directly in front of me. I pretended to be still asleep but caught the eye of one of my trip companions who smiled at me as we secretly enjoyed the strip show.
• On one of the islands our camping area backed onto a stone wall and we discovered at night that it was home to a large number of rats. One of my companions tried to block up the holes in the wall with containers of jam which the rats took great pleasure in removing.
• We met up with a pair of American doctors at one point who persuaded us to engage in some special dance moves in an otherwise Greek-filled club; most moves were ignored – the fly fishing dance, for instance – but when we all pretended to be Raymond Burr getting shot at the beginning of Ironside and all fell down to the ground as one we found ourselves the centre of a ring of very puzzled-looking people.
• We got boisterous in a bar and started dragging other people up onto the dance floor. I have a vivid memory of dancing to Don’t You Forget About Me by Simple Minds with two Danish girls. I also was thanked profusely by a man who’d wanted to dance, and wanted to dance with one of the girls in particular, but hadn’t worked up the courage until I dragged them up together.
• We walked off the beaten path into a local bar at one point where everyone turned to look at us as we entered. Not wanting to appear scared and back away we asked for drinks from a surly, silent barman – Bacardi and Coke was popular with us – where we discovered local Greek measures away from the tourist areas leaned towards the 20:1 ratio in favour of alcohol. We got very, very drunk.

We finished our trip with a few hours in Athens before flying home.

Boat Trip To Delos

We’d booked a full day excursion with Royal Princess which started with a gathering on the dock under scorching early morning heat and a not inconsiderable wait to board the boat that would take us onto Delos. We sat on top as the boat made its way out from Mykonos which left us exposed to the sunshine for the voyage, something we decided we wouldn’t repeat when coming back as it proved to be quite uncomfortably hot.

The Island Of Delos

According to Greek mythology Delos was the birthplace of both Apollo and Artemis. This was likely because Delos had already been a place of significant importance in the Cyclades group of islands for a millenium beforehand with its history including some time as the home of pirates allegedly later expelled by King Minos, then as a holy sanctuary. It also functioned as an important centre of commerce, possibly coming through a need to import nearly everything for its inhabitants, then because it was made into a free port by the Romans looking to undermine the trading influence of Rhodes. Think of its planned location and importance as being what Brexiteers think Britain will be like and its current, barren, empty condition as what will come of that.

From the dockside we walked as a group up a slow incline, stopping at the ruins of various houses and important buildings that had been close to the shoreline where we learned a little of the history of Delos as well as what had been found by archaeologists to suggest the functionality of those places we peered into.

Delos Theatre Quarter

Over the top of the incline from the dock area on Delos we entered what was described as The Theatre Quarter with a fair number of fancy houses given over to the arts and the remains of the theatre itself, around which we sat, impressed with the size of what we were experiencing for the first time.

The House Of Dionysos

From the theatre we retraced some of our steps into a location we’d passed on the way up: The House of Dionysos. One of the more complete buildings on Delos it was easily identifiable from nearby by the presence of several, tall columns but inside its walls it was the impressive floor mosaic that attracted the eye. As we walked around the artistic floor decoration we stopped to look into many of the rooms off the courtyard area of the house, some of which retained some of the original plaster and faded wall paintings too.

Temples

Our tour took us back through the marketplace of Delos then onto the more religious centre featuring wider avenues and the remains of numerous temples. Many of the stones in this area bore inscriptions indicating their history or pointing to some part of the history that the rulers of the island at the time wanted to impart to the locals and visitors; religion has always been a political tool.

The Terrace Of The Lions

At this point on our Delos tour we were given free time to either explore on our own (with some pointing out of locations of interest by our guide) or head off to the shop and café. We watched as a huge portion of our fellow cruisers set off immediately for the shop. Despite the heat, despite being almost out of water, we didn’t want to waste any time at the fabulous archeological site so made for the Terrace of the Lions. Only seven of the original nine-to-twelve lions remained but were in position as they would have been two-and-a-half thousand years earlier forming an avenue very much like the sphinxes did in ancient Egypt. Either the artists responsible for the sculptures had never seen lions before or there’s been a huge surge of evolution in the intermediate years but they still formed an impressive sight.

Delos Wildlife

I’ve already said that Delos was practically silent during our visit once you moved away from the tour group and that was what alerted us to the fact that there initially seemed to be no wildlife at all. Admittedly, the island was pretty desolate so didn’t seem to have much that would attract living creatures to its landmass but we remarked at one point that we’d not even seen or heard any birds during our visit. As we looked a little closer, though, we did pick out a few moving things in the form of some lizards and a dragonfly that led me on a merry chase for a while as I tried to get a photo of it. We even spotted a single dove sheltering from the sun at the House of the Trident.

Stoibadeion

From the stone lions we walked among the stone ruins of the agora and past the Minoan fountain, numerous impressive columns, and some fairly intact sculptures on our way towards the Stoibadeion which had a certain piece of statuary that attracted the eyes from quite a distance.

From Wikipedia’s entry on Stoibadeion:

The Stoibadeion contains a rectangular platform containing a statue of Dionysos […] Two pillars, one on each side of the platform, each support a huge phallus, the symbol of Dionysos. […] Three sides of the southern pillar have relief representations: the central scene shows a cockerel whose head and neck are elongated into a phallus, on either side are groups containing Dionysus and a Maenad, with a small Silenus on one side and a figure of Pan on the other. The southern pillar bears an inscription that it was erected ca. 300 B.C. by a Delian named Carystios in celebration of a victorious theatrical performance he sponsored.

Conclusion

We concluded our visit to Delos by heading back towards the boat through the temple area and past the Portico of Philip V of Macedonia. As I’ve mentioned before, this cruise around the Mediterranean provided some highs and lows with the service on the ship and the less-than-impressive historical site of Knossos falling in the latter category. The visit to Delos was most definitely one of the high points of the cruise, though, and I can’t recommend it enough if you’re staying on or visiting nearby Mykonos; the disparity in its grand scale and my feeling of insignificance in its history is something that will live long in the memory. I wouldn’t hesitate to revisit Delos and simply retrace the exact same route we took through its streets and buildings but there was plenty we still didn’t see in our time there anyway so if we’re in the area we’ll be back.

The boat ride from Delos took around half an hour and afforded some pleasant views of various bits of the island of Mykonos as we passed with occasional congregations of the typically white-walled Greek buildings along the fairly barren-looking shoreline breaking up the landscape.

As we got closer to Mykonos town it was possible to see many of the places that we would next be experiencing close up on a walking tour through it. It was quite interesting to see the sights from the water – the famous windmills and Little Venice, for instance – as the images you typically see of Mykonos are from a totally different perspective.

The first stop was Panagia Paraportiani, a Byzantine church, whitewashed like almost every other building on Mykonos. This was a popular spot for tourists to congregate with many people grouping together and posing for shots or taking selfies. As our tour guide explained a little of the history of the building I made use of the time to perform a half circuit of the church and snap a handful of photos featuring fewer people in the way.

After only a few minutes we all set off again at a reasonable pace through often congested alleys and somehow nobody managed to lose track of our tour guide which when you’ve been travelling on as many cruises as we have is a minor miracle. With the sky being clear, the sun being high, and those white walls of the Mykonos buildings reflecting a lot of light everywhere it was fairly easy to take fast photos at a reasonable aperture size and with low ISO as we made our way through the town. For the most part I simply lofted my camera up and clicked at random in the general area of buildings as we passed trusting to chance to take some shots with interest in the lines and contrast between the sky and structures.

Our second chance for a short rest and the opportunity for some photos was just between the famous locations of the Mykonos Windmills and Little Venice. The windmills point back to the island’s history of producing bread and both locations, being so close together and facing west, are popular spots for watching the sun set on the Mediterranean.

Our next stop would be the coach which was due to take us off to a restaurant for lunch followed by a visit to one of the island’s beaches. With the coach being to the northwest of Mykonos Town in the direction of the cruise ship this meant retracing our route for the most part. Again, amazingly, nobody got lost.

Mykonos Town had its fair share of churches. Whether they were all still in use I couldn’t say and the photos I took probably only represent a small percentage of the ones around.

Nearing the coach pickup point after negotiating our way through the town was a narrow strip of beach as well as a small port for some fairly expensive-looking yachts.

We sat outside but in the shade where we could get some breeze to help cool us down. Plenty of water, some wine, and some very reasonable food was then taken in before we had a bit of time to explore the village.

We had been told that we would be able to visit the adjacent Monastery of Panagia Tourliani, built in the 16th century and restored in the 18th, but a funeral service was being held at the time of our trip. While our tour guide said they probably wouldn’t mind if we entered in ones and twos for a look around so long as we were quiet it didn’t seem to be very respectful so we declined and I’m happy to say that everyone else in our group did as well. I made do with a few shots of the surroundings before we hit the coach for our final stop on our full day excursion.

• the sun loungers on the beach were not free,
• anybody who was wet would not be permitted back on the coach and would need to phone for a taxi.

This last point in particular got some people grumbling as they’d apparently expected they’d be able to swim in the water and drip all over the place and on the seats of the coach immediately afterwards. Entitlement is a common trait amongst cruisers. As for us, neither was a big deal as the beach held little interest for us. I suppose that for people who live far from the sea then any chance for a splash in the water is one to be taken but we’re naval port-dwellers and a stretch of coastline in which you can paddle or swim as you see fit is ten minutes away; beaches are not draws for us.

The actual location we were dropped off at along the beach was by the Thalassa restaurant. There was a small gift shop and a large, concrete area on which chairs and tables were set (and probably many more could be added).

A stone sculpture of a boat (white, like almost everything on Mykonos) provided a point of interest for photographers. In particular, it caught the attention of a group of Asian tourists (not part of our group) who proceeded to take – from memory, and this is just approximate – five hundred million photographs of themselves posing in front and on top of it. Meanwhile, I stood nearby, camera in hand, hoping that maybe, just maybe they might spot that someone else wanted to take one photo and that perhaps twenty minutes of hogging that single location was excessive. I’m not exaggerating about the twenty minutes. They finally fucked off with just a couple of minutes left before we were due to return to the coach.

Back on board the Royal Princess we showered and changed for the evening and I grabbed a last couple of photos of Mykonos as we headed out of the port and one shot of the sun starting to sink towards the horizon as the ship set course for the last port of call, Athens.

The excursion we’d taken was a full day one with the highlight being the boat trip to Delos. If I were to return to Mykonos I’d be happy to return to that islet and spend the rest of the day in Mykonos town, exploring it more fully as I’m sure there was far more there than we got a chance to see.