Travel Blogging V

Mykonos, Greece: We spent the day tied up alongside in Mykonos. The day started out grey and overcast, then cleared and became sunny and warm. We took a stroll into the town after lunch, using the shuttle bus to get from the pier to the beginnings of “town.”

Everybody raves about Mykonos, they say it is the pearl of the Cyclades, the DrsC don’t agree. We find it to be stark and barren, a place that appears to get next to no rain and thus grows next to no ground cover.

I guess one could get excited about the architecture, if you are into stark white stucco cubes, scattered across a desert-like terrain. Ninety plus percent of the buildings have flat roofs and most of these have no downspouts for rain.

There are windmills, so I guess the wind sometimes blows, it didn’t today. I was reminded of several Mexican coastal towns that thrive on tourism: lots of sidewalk cafes of dubious cleanliness but excellent views, interspersed with shops selling Greek souvenirs made in China.

A problem the DrsC always have in Greece is our inability to decode the signage. For two people who have spent a lifetime being hyperliterate, becoming suddenly illiterate is no fun.

We also don’t read Spanish or Italian or German but can figure out how words might be pronounced, what roots they might share with English. None of that works in Greek, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. We cannot guess at words’ meanings or even how they’re spoken.