Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Good morning Mykonos! While hubby was getting ready, I can’t waste my precious vacation time so I went to the main lobby for photos. The lobby is beautifully decorated in tones of white and blue. The creamy color of the furniture and chandelier added warmth to the room.

The silver table and the mirror with the yellowish-brownish chandelier added elegance to the open space. It looked like a modern palace doesn’t it?

I wanted a picture with it but all three days we were there, we just didn’t get a chance to 🙁

I went back to the room and grabbed hubby for breakfast; breakfast starts at 8 am. What’s better than a yummy breakfast with the view of Mykonos Town and the blue ocean? Hotel provided an excellent breakfast, this was so far the best breakfast I ever had in a hotel…for free too! Huge selections of cold and hot food: cakes, croissants, muffins, cereals, sausages, bacon, mushrooms, greek yogurt, variety of hams, you name it!

I had a full plate of food and got a front row seat facing the lovely town of Mykonos 🙂

After the delicious full breakfast, we walked down the hill again to the bus station. Our itinerary for the day: bus to beaches! We didn’t rent a car for our stay because hubby not use to driving a manual car and I heard automatic car will be a lot more expensive. Second, the places we planned to go can be reached by buses! We saw a lot of scooters and buggies….I must get sunburned if I ride on those!

First stop: Paradise Beach!

The bus ride to Paradise was 1.6 euros per person per way, it takes 15 minutes only to reach there. On the way, we were amazed by the bus driver’s driving skill, sharp turning on small roads!!! We went up and down the hills and turning corners! We spotted a small house but with a huge garden filled with flowers, I made a note to myself to take a pic on the way back! We have arrived Paradise Beach! It was very quiet in the early morning, we got there at 10:30 am! First thing we saw as we walking our way to the beach:

It’s probably the most photographed spot in Paradise Beach! Got to have a picture with it 🙂

The walls were very colorful and cute:

Entrance to the restrooms haha!

They even have Chinese too which reads: Welcome to paradise island!

The beach is filled with bars and clubs….a famous party beach at night! We are not party people so we’ll pass that 🙂

Empty beach chairs in the morning. It was a cloudy day so the water color looked dull 🙁

Cute little cart table:

More beach chairs in bright orange color:

We didn’t stay long because of the cloudy sky or else would stay longer for more photos. We took the 11:30 bus back to town. I remembered to snap a photo of house with a huge garden:

The garden probably 10x the size of the house, pretty cool!

We were back to town and headed down to Little Venice area for lunch. On our way, we found more cute “marshmallows” LOL! I really like the white and gray combination of this house with dark pink flower, it really stand out!

Already napping time?

Let me tell you, the cats and dogs in the Greek islands, aren’t they lucky?

More house photos, I just can’t get enough of them!

The tiniest walkway!

There is a church near Little Venice and I saw many chandeliers inside so we went in to check it out. It’s a huge contrast to the white cube on the outside but interior it’s lavishly decorated with paintings and chandeliers!

This is a bar??

On our search for a place for lunch, we passed by this adorable street with many stairways coming out:

Photo of us haha!

Mykonos is one of those places that I visited that doesn’t have much let’s say “main tourist attraction sites” but there are plenty of photo ops just on the streets!

Their mode of transporting goods: scooters!

More houses…..didn’t we say we were looking for a place for lunch?? I think it’s fair to say: every house is unique!

We once again passed by Paraportiani and had a photo of us 🙂 We used hubby’s video stabilizer as the tripod for a quick photo of us with the church!

Also a panorama of it, this one was taken with my iPhone 5S:

Ok, it was time for food! We picked Katerina’s, they have an outdoor seating porch that faces the water and the Windmills but only 3 tables so advanced reservation is required. We asked for outdoor seating and we were extremely lucky that one of the table reserved got cancelled!!!! Lunch with a view! Would be perfect if it wasn’t a cloudy day but can’t be greedy right?

The woman from the house next to it was fishing!!!

I ordered the sweet and spicy shrimp spaghetti and hubby ordered a spaghetti with mussels.

My spaghetti was good with sweet from cherry tomatoes and a little kick of spiciness with chilly peppers (it was very mild spicy to me). I’ll give it a 4 stars. Hubby’s spaghetti was filled with mussels compared to my 4 shrimps, I guess mussels are cheaper in Mykonos?

Lunch cost: 38 euros; view cost: priceless 🙂

We talked about what to do next after lunch and we decided to visit another beach: Ornos. It was a good 10-15 minutes walk back to the bus stop. Another great street view (this was taken with my iPhone 5S):

We walked back to the bus stop and passed by this car rental place filled with signs:

The bus to Ornos was the same price 1.6 euros per person per way and it only takes 10 minutes!  Silly us, we got off at Ornos town instead of Ornos beach so it was a little walk to get to the beach. Once again, cloudy sky didn’t do justice to the water color!

The beach already filling up with people though!

To be honest, we weren’t impressed by the beaches in Mykonos (probably we have been to the beaches in the Caribbeans) and plus the cloudy sky. I guess the beaches here are for chill out and relax! There was no souvenir shopping in Ornos town either so we decided to heading back! The bus is not as frequent as to Super Paradise, next bus at 3:40 which we sat there and waited for almost an hour! During the one hour wait, there were many people stopped by to check the bus schedule and many decided to split the cab back to town! The bus finally came and I took a photo of Ornos on the bus:

When I was planning the trip, I once considered to stay in areas out of Mykonos Town but after I visited those areas, I think Mykonos Town is more suitable for us because hubby’s traveling requirements: plenty to see and buy!

We got back to town and guess what…more photos of houses!

We passed the Windmills and surprisingly there weren’t as much people as yesterday! Great timing for photos! Also, there was intermittent blue sky!!!

Little Venice from the Windmills!

Walking toward the Windmills, we found out there were very nice spots to capture the full Little Venice, be sure to spend some time walking around the Windmills to find hidden spots for beautiful photos!

From the back of the Windmills:

All 5 Windmills and on the back is the parking lot:

I walked into the last windmill and hubby ran all the way to the rock to take these photos:

The difference of the water color when sunny blue sky!

We spent quite some time at the Windmills for photos and that’s what we enjoyed to do! Afterwards, we walked back into town for search of a restaurant for tonight’s dinner. The hotel recommended Avra so we tried to navigate by map to get there…not an easy task! Of course we had to stop by every cute house we encountered haha!

We made it to Panachratou street, the shopping street of brand names. Even the luxury brand shops are in those cute whitewashed houses!!!

Many cute houses we passed by on this street! Any idea of what are those black thing? It looked like spinning mills! Thanks to donnyb from TripAdvisor: “The black spinning things near the Louis Vuitton store were water wells … this part of Mykonos Town is Tria Pigadia which translated means Three Wells.”

Another cute church!

Once reached the end of Panachratou street (it becomes another street name), the street perpendicular is where a lot of high rated restaurants located: Kalogera Street. Turn to the left will be Avra, turn to the right will be M-eating and Sakis (for gyros). We walked to Avra but it’s not open yet, I asked the waiter there and he said they’ll open at 7 and required reservation. Urg…that’s too late for me, I will be starving! We continued down the road to look for another restaurant. We passed by Fresh Boutique Hotel, I saw this on booking.com and was once considered this. Next time if I visit Mykonos again, I would stay right in town and Fresh Boutique Hotel looked like a good location!

The walkway reflected the sunlight and turned into silvery color, the effect was pretty cool!

After going in circles, hubby was getting hungry and tired so we decided to go back to Katerina’s for dinner. This time, we had the table with a view from the window. Interior of Katherina’s, upstairs is for drinks and downstairs for food:

I hate to say this but…it was a wrong choice for dinner 🙁

Hubby ordered the mussels and they were overcooked!

For main course, hubby had the grilled squid, not as good as it could be, he said! He looked happy not from the food but wifi to connect with his friends lol!

I had the rib-eye steak, I asked for medium rare….urg this is a rib-eye? And it was way too well done!

Dinner was 49 euros, I rather get gyros 🙁

Hubby was still hungry after dinner, I don’t blame him!  He wanted gyros but made a mistake getting one on our way back to the hotel – the store right near the bus stop and across from the car rentals. It was the worst pita ever!!! The pita bread was hard, the chicken was not freshly made, it was not even shaved off from the vertical spit, it has been sitting there for hours, oh geez what could be worst!!!!

I, on the other hand, wanted crepes so I got one sweet one from Yummy’s. Although it cost 5.7 euros, it was really yummy! Hubby took a bite and couldn’t resisted for more haha! I guess that was the only right choice we made this dinner!  The walk back to the hotel was hard, I had to make a few stops to catch my breath! We made it back to the hotel before sunset so we hang out at the pool for photos!

Sunset from up here was very nice too!

I set up the GoPro for time lapse and then just enjoy the sunset 🙂

Another day in Mykonos, I wish everyday I could have time to enjoy the sunset!

After dusk, the town was lit up (the two photos below were taken handheld, we were too lazy to run back to set up the tripod…will do that tomorrow):

The lobby at night:

They never turn on those chandelier….energy saving maybe? But I love the painting of the tree on the back of the reception desk! Good night again, tomorrow our plan is to visit Delos 🙂