Overhyped Mykonos and Spectacular Delos

Platys Gialos beach
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From the guidebook, we knew that Mykonos was going to be busy and expensive (even camping was twice the price).  So we'd hoped to just take an excursion boat to Delos and Mykonos from Tinos, but the boat was not running this year.

We arrived on a ferry from Tinos at a little before 1 PM.  There was a Myknons Camping minibus meeting the ferry so we got on that.  The campsite was located right beside Paraga beach.  What looked like a 10 minute drive on the map was actually more like 30 minutes with all the traffic--even considering that the minibus was driven by a crazy man.  The roads on Mykonos (as in most of Greece) are very narrow with just enough room for two cars.  There are lots of blind corners and pedestrians were not considered during road construction.  Our driver drove so fast and he was always attempting to pass 'slower' (probably the speed limit) vehicles.  It was like being on an amusement park ride.

The Terrace of Lions
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We finally arrived at Mykonos Camping (in one piece) and checked in.  The girl thought it strange that we wanted to sleep under the covered area in just our sleeping bags and no tent.  Obviously she hadn't been to any other campsites on neighbouring islands.  The campsite itself was very big.  There was a pool, a restaurant and bar.  Paraga beach was just a couple of minutes away and looked really nice, although very busy.

We left our back packs and walked over to the nearby beach town of Platys Gialos.  It was pretty much just beach bunnies and loungers so we hopped on a bus to Mykonos.  First we bought boat tickets to Delos for the following morning.  Then we looked for a place to leave our packs while we went to Delos as we were leaving by ferry that night.  We went into this Camping Association office to ask if they knew of anywhere to leave luggage.  The smarmy man asked, "How much?", then said he'd watch it for 10 euros.  As if we'd leave our packs with him!  We found that the place where we bought ferry tickets would do it for no charge.  We didn't do too much other than that except get gyros and walk to a large supermarket to get food for the ferry ride and bottled water.  We then went back to the campsite.

Mt. Kythnos
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Music was coming loud from the campsite bar and neighbouring clubs.  We slept with earplugs in and could still hear it.  Thankfully the worst of it was over by about 4 AM but music could still be heard past 7 AM.  When we were ready to leave we went to get our food and water from the campsite fridge and found that someone had taken our two bottles of water (#$%#@!!!).  Don't even mention the word water to Aidan for awhile--she gets a little worked up.

We went to Mykonos and got on the 10 AM boat for Delos.  It took about 30 minutes to get over to Delos, an uninhabited island with one of Greece's greater archeological sites.  You can only reach it by boat, so that limited the number of tourists, and it was so big that you barely even noticed other tourists at times.  We saw the Terrace of the Lions and the House of Cleopatra, and climbed the rocky Mt. Kythnos (113 m) to get an overview of the island.

After we returned, we did some more exploring of Little Venice (not really like Venice), had gyros, then went to wait for our ferry to Thessaloniki, more than ready to leave Mykonos.