Mykonos and Delos, Greece

Our next port was the Greek island of Mykonos.  When we booked the cruise, we were given an incentive of some onboard credit we could apply to excursions, spending money on board, etc.  Most of the excursions seemed like things we could figure out how to do on our own, but there was one that really appealed to me and my interest in ancient Greek archaeology and mythology.  I wanted to go to Delos, the island where myth held that Apollo and Artemis were born and which was an important pilgrimage and commercial port dating to the 1st millennium B.C. and had been inhabited since the 3rd millennium B.C.  I've been reading Percy Jackson books with the girls for a while and once Lydia heard that we could go to Delos, she was very excited to go too.

We assembled on the ship with the other excursion passengers to wait for our tender.  While waiting, we challenged the kids to thumb wars.

It was a long wait.  We originally thought (or at least hoped) that our tender would go direct from the cruise ship to Delos which would have allowed us to get off the ship earlier while the rest of the passengers sailed on to Mykonos.  It didn't work like that for us.

The disorganized nature and inefficiency of the tendering for this excursion is funny now, but at the time it was just irritating.  We finally were able to get on our tender to go to Mykonos.  When we arrived at Mykonos's harbor, we got off the tender and then waited to get on a different boat to go to Delos.  However, when we got on the boat we were told to board, it just took us to the other side of the harbor.  It would have been about 20 minutes for us to walk to the other side of the harbor, but would have made more sense for the tender to have dropped us off on that side of the harbor to begin with.  Finally we boarded the ferry to Delos.  Taking three boats when we were hoping for just one to get to our excursion was not encouraging.

We found out that the ferry was only available for excursion passengers in the afternoon when we arrived, so we wouldn't have been able to get to Delos on the ferry had we tried to do it on our own.  Knowing that dealing with the cruise ship excursion pain was a necessary price to pay to go where I wanted to go made it a little better.

Once we were on the ferry, we relaxed and enjoyed the trip to Delos.

Here's our cruise ship from the ferry.

On Delos, we had a guided tour - our guide led our group of 30-50 people around and discussed various parts of the ruins into a radio microphone and we could hear her in our earpieces.

In mythology, Leto was pregnant with Apollo and Artemis by Zeus.  Hera, Zeus's wife, was understandably upset about her unfaithful husband.  Instead of going directly against Zeus, the king of the gods, Hera ordered all lands and islands to refuse to give Leto shelter to give birth.  Leto eventually finds Delos which was separate from the mainland of Greece and was somehow also not attached to the ocean floor and therefore not a true island and under Hera's decree.  Exploiting this loophole, Leto gives birth to Apollo and Artemis and their births anchor Delos to the ocean floor creating it as an island.

The city state of Athens conducted several purifications of the island to make it fit for worship that included digging up graves to move the bodies away.  The rulers passed down a decree that no one would be allowed to be buried on the island in the future.  They also declared no one could be born on the island to prevent any claims of inheritance or ownership of the island and to preserve its neutrality due to how important a site it was.

This floor mosaic is in the House of Dionysus between huge marble columns dating to the 2nd century B.C.  It's remarkable how well preserved it is.

The interior and most famous part of the mosaic depicts the god Dionysus as a winged daimon riding a tiger, probably on one of the god's journeys from India.

The tour took us along winding paths through the old homes, markets, and temples, mostly lined with stone walls.

I believe this is the theater dating to 314 B.C.

Delos is notorious for being unsheltered with very little vegetation and the hot summer sun beating down.  It supposedly has one of the highest concentrations of sunlight of any place in the area (fitting since it is the mythological birthplace of the Greek god of the sun Apollo).  We made sure to have plenty of water on hand and hats for shade.

Stray cats were everywhere on Delos and Greece in general.  Lydia especially wanted to pet all the cats she could find.

The famous Terrace of the Lions dedicated to Apollo around 600 B.C.  Originally, there were nine to twelve lions along the so called Sacred Way.  Now only seven remain in various states of ruin.

 

 

One of the cats found shade underneath the larger stone "big cat".  I thought it was funny.

One of the lions was famously moved to Venice in front of the Arsenale in 1716 as it reminded the Venetians of Saint Mark.  The Venetians infamously added a ridiculous head to the statue.  This stock photo shows that lion and I like to think the lion in the background is looking at this Delian lion with disdain and confusion because of its strange head.

Lydia continued to find cats to pet.

Looking out over the ruins.

Derek liked using the binoculars to see temples and ruins on the distant hillside that we didn't have time to explore.

We thought this made a cool picture.  Then we were chastised for being on parts of the site that we weren't allowed to stand on.  Oops.

We took the ferry back from Delos and explored Mykonos following a Rick Steves walk starting from the harbor.  Mykonos has had an up and down time over the centuries between being a place for supplies for Delos, being passed around from Roman to Byzantine to Venetian and then Ottoman rule.  In the 1960s it became a popular spot for international jet set tourists and is now known as one of the most ritzy and expensive islands in Greece.

Mykonos's nickname is the Island of the Winds.  Judging by Karina's hair, it lives up to the moniker.

This section of the town of Chora with colorful houses right on the sea is called Little Venice.

 

Restaurants with tables right along the water provided nice ambiance for diners.

Our walk took us up the stairs to a hillside...

...where the iconic windmills of Mykonos sit.  The windmills were built by the Venetians in the 16th century to harness the strong northern winds to mill flour and were still in use as recently as the early 20th century.  Other windmills like these on the island have been converted for other uses, but these famous seven on the hill in the town of Chora are mostly used as photo backdrops for pictures on Instagram and elsewhere.

Derek went back to the ship with Mimi and Mormor after the windmills.  Tanja, the girls, and I continued on our walk through the winding streets of the town.  I was a fan of the few flowers that were growing in gardens or along the way as it broke up the otherwise arid and barren landscape.

 

This garbage truck was perfectly suited for navigating the narrow alleys.

Yes, we are weird and enjoy documenting things like tiny garbage trucks.

The bougainvillea against the whitewashed mortar of the cobblestone streets of this market plaza was strikingly pretty.

The streets on Mykonos were purposely confusing.  They were designed to be a maze that would trap pirate invaders during the Venetian times leaving them wandering around for hours and opening them up to counter attacks by the locals.  We were warned of this fact in our Rick Steves book but attempted to follow the path he outlined through the most confusing section of the walk.  While wandering through the maze, we admired the bright colors of the railings and window trims set against the blinding whitewashed walls of all the houses and shops.

We succeeded in getting ourselves lost and never did finish the path the way Rick Steves described, but thanks to Tanja, we did manage to get out of the maze.  We worked our way back to the harbor to join the long line to tender back to the cruise ship (and thankfully only had to take one boat trip back).