Day 3: Mykonos, Greece

Today, I meant to wake up and go do the walk a mile at 9. I set my phone alarm for 20 minutes before and then go out to do the walking thing. I woke up and then decided that I did not want to wake up, so I went back to sleep until 10. At that point, I looked outside and while it was cool to see a few Greek isles, it looked like Poiseidon was very unhappy with us because the waves were extremely large.

Anyway, it took us a while to get ready to go up to eat. It took us even longer because we watched the last half of Mad Money, that movie with Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes. It was kind of dumb.

We did eventually go up to eat and were too late to eat the breakfast. That’s okay because lunch was set up and it was good. As we were eating, the crazy waves rocked the ship back and forth. Chris would not have survived this portion of the cruise had he been able to come with us. At some point the ship made some sound as if we had hit something. After that the ship started tilting towards one side. Everyone ignored me as I first said it, but at some point the ship was tilting so much to one side that all of the plates in the Windjammer Café started falling off of the tables. There were also oranges rolling around everywhere, which was actually kind of funny had it all not been so terrifying.

Eventually, though, we did make it to the Mykonos port. Initially, we were supposed to take tenders to the island and dock the boat a distance away from the island. Because of the especially high winds today, they decided to dock it at another port instead. Anyway, we didn’t really dock until one thirty. We were going to wait a while to disembark because we knew there would be a long line to exit, so Chabba, Andrew, and I walked a mile and a half while we waited. The winds were kind of intense and I felt like I was going to fly away at certain points.

Because of the wind, however, they cancelled the one shore excursion that was planned today. So, even though we were unable to secure tickets this one, it was okay because no one else could.

We went back down to the rooms and found Oppa, Gianni and James in the room. No one else was downstairs, so we went back up to the Windjammer to find that mostly everyone was still there. They had just started disembarking, so we waited a little while before we actually did disembark.

Once we got down, we stood in line to take the shuttle to the main part of the city. That took about 5-10 minutes. The ground was very similar to that therapeutic rock garden that we had found, so we had this big contest to see who could walk on it the longest. None of us gave up, so there was no clear winner.

We eventually got to the main town, which is also called Mykonos. Due to the heavy winds, we decided to nix the plans to go to one of the beaches. That’s okay, though, because all of the beaches were probably jam packed.

Now that I have been to Mykonos, I don’t see what all of our travel books were complaining about. The place in the small dosage of it that we got was very cute. It was very stereotypically Greek and it was not really that crowded. I’ve had bigger crowds on off days in Disneyland. But the place is very cute.

Instead of taking us to the main town first, Chabba took us up through a hill to get a nice view of the sea and the town. We also got to see a couple of windmills up close and found a number of random churches. I also think that James started dancing on someone’s roof. Good times.

After that, we made our way down to the main parts of town, winding our way through the narrow streets of this city. This place was an especially fun town to navigate. When they designed this city, they intentionally made the streets confusing to navigate to ward of pirates. On the way down we did find this place selling fake sunglasses and I think I found what will be the closest I will get to replacing Crasher’s fake Armani glasses that broke a year ago. Also, I think Nicole has finally warmed up to us. I think its because she has realized that Mia and I are actually kind of silly and dumb and are of no threat to her.

At some point, Chabba, Mia, Andrew, James, and I went to find Nonny and Nonno because they had just disembarked. On the way there, we got to see one of the fame pink pelicans of Mykonos. Pelicans are a lot larger than I thought they are and they are also very soft. Did not know that. I think the name of this pelican is Petros II. The original Petros used to hang around the city but died when a taxi driver hit him. I think they then stuffed him and put him on display in a museum, kind of like that anteater that is on display in the student center now at UCI. That thing really disturbs me.

Anyway, we eventually find them and head back to meet everyone else. We found them and then hung out in that area for a while. We saw the “little Venice” part of town, which I think has that name because of the houses that lie on the waterfront. Umma, Gianni and I also went to a touristy shop to get some souvenirs and postcards. Umma thanked the woman at the store in Greek, which seemed to have really amused the woman because she followed us out of the store laughing at us after that. I don’t know .

Right now the boat is rocking like crazy and we are still tilted towards one direction. Anyway, we left soon after that. We kept on running into cats, which would really excite all of my siblings as well as Andrew and they would then spend the next five years chasing the cats around. I got souvenirs for all of my female friends, woot. We were supposed to take pictures lined against one of the white walls, but we posed like a police line up to annoy Umma. I guess other tourists found this amusing because they took pictures of us as well. This is actually creepy if you think about it, but I am glad that we bring joy to others.

On the way out, we also saw a couple of other pelicans. One almost bit James. That was funny. I sent out my postcards and then we went off in search of an Internet café. We eventually found a placed that offered free wireless if you spent at least 3 euro and then each of us took over the computers there.

That took a while, but we eventually were finished. We would have left immediately after, but Gianni had left while we were waiting to call Laura and we had to wait around until he came back (especially because he had Andrew’s ID card).

We get on the ship and head off to our rooms, with little time to spare before we had dinner. We got ready and had our dinner. Good stuff tonight . I had vegetable samosas, Greek salad, and vegetable pad thai. Forgot to take a picture though, which is kind of sad because I decided yesterday that I was going to take photos of my dinner every night.

The ship is now making very unhappy noises.

After dinner, I went up to the library with Gianni and Andrew so that I could complete my daily trivia and sudoku. Mia and Chabba joined us for a while. I went up to the 9th level for a little after that to watch us take off. I wasn’t there for long, though, because I got tired of the heavy winds very quickly. Ended up going back downstairs, where I started blogging and have been working on it ever since.

Tomorrow we go to Turkey (assuming we survive these waves right now :D). Considering the current events in Turkey, this should be interesting, but I am sure we will be fine. It is supposed to be very pretty, but I am also afraid that without the wind that we experienced today, it is going to be deathly hot. Combine that with the fact that we are supposed to dress conservatively tomorrow and this should prove to be fun. In all honesty, though, I am actually very excited about going to Turkey tomorrow. After I blog, I am going to go read about Turkey. That’s it for today.