Funny enough, Mykonos has probably been the most memorable consecutive 4 days I have EVER had in my life. It was filled with the type of memories I would tell my grandchildren and reminded me so much of the story my Aunt Candace told me about her and my mom in Jamaica. For one, we arrived in Mykonos at the port and had a man from our hotel “Paradise Resort” waiting for us to bring us back to the “resort.” So we get in the van and then make one more stop at another port where a group of eight rowdy Austrailian guys got in our van. So the first thing I was thinking was…is this really a “resort” that we are going to? Because not for nothing, they looked more like the tent camping type with their backpacks and dirty hiker boots and clothes. Little did we know, they were way more dressed for what we were about to experience. We pull up to Paradise “Resort” and go to the reception desk but I still didn’t see this “hotel” building that I expected our rooms to be in. Well, Paradise “resort” is actually a camping site composed of cement cabins and tents with iron beds inside of them. The funny thing was I thought of my mom and sister as soon as I rolled up and opened the door to our cement cabin with our two iron beds on each wall and was about to SCREAM. We won’t even go there about the bathrooms, I think you get the idea. But as me and my other friends always say, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. And for 20 euros a night for the cabin and a free breakfast, we got what we paid for…granted we had better luck in Spain when we paid the same price, but you live and you learn, and realize that the best vacations have nothing to do with your sleeping accommodations.
Since we got to Mykonos in the early afternoon, we chilled on the beach at our “resort” even though it was a little windy, but with the mountains off in the distance and the Mediterranean seas various colors along with the little white cement houses up in the cliffs, it was definitely a place for us to reflect on our entire abroad experience. That night, we froze. The blanket they gave us for our beds kept sliding off in the middle of the night and it was so bad that Tammy and I would literally be looking at each other in the middle of the darkness, half asleep and probably thinking the same thing, damn this “resort.” But we got smarter after the first night and asked for another blanket and slept just fine the following night. The interesting part began after our first night though. We woke up early in the morning and headed into Mykonos town where there are a ton of small streets and shops. We walked through the entire place in almost 2 hours, but in the process sat down for drinks and met this awesome Greek waiter that gave us the run down about the entire island. His name was Yiannis and he is originally from Athens. He moved to Mykonos 3 years ago to get away from the city life and see more of nature as he put it. This man told me he makes 3,000 EUROS, which is like 4,000 dollars a month. I was like huuuuuhhhhhhhhh!!! To serve drinks?????????????????????? His rent for an entire house here is 330 euros which he splits with a roommate, and then I told him that he better stop before I move to Mykonos and never return to New York. Nevertheless, we had great conversations about life and made arrangements to meet up later on. Since Tammy and I are known as the “old ladies” of our friends, we never came back into town to meet him later because we really didn’t feel like partying, but ended up going to hang out with him the following day. Yiannis did recommend we get dinner at a place close to the bar he worked at which had small little white tables facing the sea in direct view of the sunset. The food of course was incredible because all Greek food is incredible, but the view was just spectacular, which made the food 20 times better.
Before we had left the town that day, we met a bike and quad shop owner, who said he would rent us some quads the following day if we wanted to explore Mykonos in a less conventional route. He had my imagination racing with every movie of young students riding through the mountains and seeing the coastline on little streets in the mountains before he even finished his sentence. We had actually gotten the quad/motor bike idea at our “resort” but the worker there didn’t speak English well and told us that it would be 15 euro per hour but you had to rent it for 24 hours. So I was like wait you’re gonna charge us 360 EURO to rent a darn motor bike for a day????? And because I started speaking really fast (because that’s naturally what you do when you are baffled) the guy just nodded so Tammy and I walked off laughing and squashed that dream. But the guy who owned the quad shop in Mykonos town told us he would give it to us for 15 euro a day, and hearing that price difference made our dream come back to reality. The guy’s name was Manos, typical old Greek guy, but he has lived on the island his entire life. He told us where the best bars were and where we could see some authentic Greek dancing. We were of course excited and the next day we returned to the town to pick up our motorquads early since we unfortunately missed the last boat to Delos, the ancient archeological site/island close to Mykonos. We had been going to town by the bus that runs from our cabin site to the town and the Greek bus driver was not exactly my cup of tea. He was SO rude when I simply asked him when the last bus back to the resort was, so I wrote him off and Tammy and I gave the bus (that looked like it’d been alive since the 60s) the nickname of the “truck that is disguised as a bus” and the “bus driver that never got a chance to drive his truck.” Moving on….his spontaneous coffee break made us miss our boat to Delos, but God has everything happen for a reason and it gave us more time to explore Mykonos on our quads. We decided to be adventurous and not take a map. So when we stopped at the first gorgeous site on the side of a little mountain road to take pictures and turned our motorquads off, we realized that Manos never showed us how to turn our motorquads back on. We had officially made it 5 miles out of the town (Mykonos is only but so big) so imagine being in the most rural area where people don’t speak English and only Greek and then us trying to explain to them that we need to call the owner of our motorquads to tell him to come and get us. We at the time assumed that he gave us messed up quads and didn’t realize that we never asked how to turn them back on, so we took the opportunity since we were still at a pretty site to eat lunch and wait for him to come and get us. So as we ate he eventually rolled up on his motorbike and laughed saying “wow you grew to miss me that quickly” we then looked at him and were like “did you just give us messed up quads?” clearly we were not amused, but then we ended up being the silly ones because as we showed him how it wouldn’t “start” he calmly came over checked the gas, saw it was fine, and then pulled down the engine pump, pressed a button and then it started. So we all laughed and then he told us where the gas station was again, since we somehow missed it after he told us the first time as we were driving. And then we were off again, exploring Mykonos with our quads, helmets, and gorgeous mountainous view of the Mediterranean sea’s coast. We still couldn’t find the gas station and since we were stopping trying to figure out where we were/my quad turned off again and had to figure out how Manos restarted it the last time. When we looked up and there were two old greek guys, with the movie stereotype of four teeth looking at us, clearly seeing we were tourists. Of course, they also spoke no English, which made it 10 times more fun as Tammy tried to explain that we were looking for a gas station. Eventually the old man said he would come and show us, so he jumped on Tammy’s quad and she rode on the back. We joined a line of motor bike riders and rode one mile up the road to the gas station, clearly seeing how we passed it thanks to the limited English of Manos, even though he is one of the better speakers we met. So then we got gas and the old man jumped on the back of my quad and we rode him back to where we found him sitting. In Greek (like I could understand that) he asked me where I was a from, and eventually I figured out as he started listing countries what he was asking me, so I replied New York (which is the only place they seem to know in the U.S.) and he said “oh New York, New York!” and then proceeded to laugh and scream “MYKONOS!!!!!!” As we rode on the street back to his post, I couldn’t help but crack up because it was literally something out of a movie.
After we dropped him off, Tammy and I continued on our no map adventure and found a secluded beach off some road to stop and chill/write post cards. The view was just breathtaking, so we stayed for hours, dunked our feet in the water, and then went back into town to meet up with the waiter Yiannis after he got off work. After another amazing conversation about life, his advice, and his captivation with our hair and why we would perm it (that could be another blog post in itself), we returned back to our resort on our quads watching the sunset during the 20 minute ride. Later that night, we went to Oniro Bar and Restaurant, which overlooks Mykonos town and the old bay. It had a gorgeous view! Probably the best way to end our Mykonos experience. We woke up the following morning and latched our suitcases on the back of our quads (see the videos) and then rode into town to catch our boat to Santorini. Mykonos will definitely go down in my college history and stories to everyone I talk to!!!!
Well to that I say, damn the masses and after reading Candace Bushnell’s One Fifth Avenue after one of my nostalgic moments where I started to think, “hey, maybe I do miss New York,” and rushed to Casa del Libro where I remembered seeing the book on sale in English, I realized that I simply don’t. I do not miss New York. Although once and always considered a suburban Jersey girl, after a year at New York University, New York has become home. It is my home. It’s a part of me and gives me the same feeling that every student feels when they return home to see their parents in their hometown, extremely excited at first to have a great home cooked meal and family attention, only a week later to find out, OMG I am ready to move back into my little dorm and reclaim my freedom. I think my return to New York will be somewhat like that. I’ll be so excited to be back in the hustle and bustle, and then after about a week and the reality of senior year facing me, I’ll be ready to fly back over to Europe, back to my little room I am renting in this old house in Sevilla, Spain.
But we celebrated that night by checking out Madrid’s night life and then I left the following afternoon to head back to Sevilla. In all, I think Bryson and Asha’s first experience in Spain and Europe was a positive one and I hope they get to come back (thanks to the mess ups of Air France)!
