Day 8 - Mykonos

back to the waters I've grown accustomed to seeing.

By the time I woke up this morning, we’d been back through the Dardanelles and were back in the Aegean Sea (back to the dark blue waters that I’ve grown accustomed to seeing on this trip).  I also realized that we are officially 2/3 of the way through the trip, and I’m already beginning to dread the return to reality.

It was a fairly relaxing morning on ship, just walking a couple of miles on the deck then hanging out by the pool for a while. By about 11, Mykonos was in sight and we had docked and opened the gangway at 12:30.  All the houses and businesses are the traditional white with blue trim, and stand out against the stark brown rocky hillside.  According to the guidebook, there’s little or no fresh water available on the island and they have to rely on desalinization for all drinking water.

Today’s sight seeing trip involved a second boat ride to the Island of Delos, the mythological birth place of the god of light, Apollo.  The island has been uninhabited since about 100 B.C. and is currently protected as an ecological habitat.  The only people allowed to spend the night there are the care takers.  The island’s hey day was 300 B.C. when it was inhabited by approximately 25 thousand people.  In the remains of the city, you can tell what the houses were like and how the people lived.  Since there are no springs on the island, the people relied on plumbing systems to collect rain water from the roofs of the houses and cisterns to have water in the homes.  However, there is an underground septic system under the streets that carried waste water away from the indoor bathrooms.  To protect people’s privacy, there were no windows in the front of the houses, but they did have an open courtyard in the center that was open to the sky for both light and air flow.

Island of Mykonos

Probably the most famous things on the island are the stone lions that were used go guard the temple.

We returned to Mykonos a couple of hours before sunset to have some time roaming the streets of the city, shopping, and sampling the local restaurants.  We sail at 11:30 tonight and will be in Kusadasi, Turkey (Ephesus) in the morning.