All we wanted was grilled cheese...

This weekend we went to Mykonos, which is about a three hour (fast ferry) ride from Piraeus (the port of Athens, which is a 30 minute metro ride from where we live). The island itself is less picturesque than Hydra, but it was still very beautiful. We stayed at a hostel called Mama's Pension, but it was more like a B&B, minus the breakfast, than a hostel. There is actually a "Mama" and a Papa, and their son and daughter-in-law run the place now. We could walk to a small beach, St. Stefanos, from where we were staying, and our rooms had a spectacular view of the sea. Mykonos is technically known as the "party" island, but our hostel was on another side of the island (the beaches by all the clubs were pretty ugly, to be honest) while still bus/cab accessible to the night life.

After we had dropped off our stuff, it was time for lunch. Considering the fact that we had just gotten off a four-hour ferry ride, we weren't in the mood for anything heavy. After a little exploring, we were pleased to find a taverna by our beach that had grilled cheese on the menu. When the waitress brought out the food, though, we realized that "grilled cheese" was, literally, a hunk of cheese that is grilled. It wasn't bad, but definitely not what our stomachs were in the mood for. On Sunday we went back for salads, and the waitress made a joke about the grilled cheese, which led us to believe that we weren't the first Americans to make this mistake.

On Saturday evening I met Mama and Papa, who spoke very little English. Their daughter-in-law is German, and met her husband while traveling with some friends in the Greek islands. Turns out that the "Uncle" owns a taverna down the road, which we went to for dinner on Saturday night. Hands down the best, most authentic Greek food I've had so far (new favorite food: moussaka) - we were pretty much the only tourists there. The "house white wine" tasted similar to what I imagine turpentine tastes like, which was another indicator that we were truly eating with the locals.

As it gets closer to the end of September, the island season is ending, too. A lot of the clubs were already closed, and some were having their closing parties while we were there, which was fun (side note: turns out that Mykonos is also known for its gay night life, and we saw a lot of rainbow flags outside a few clubs - I didn't realize that was a universal symbol). The weather was sunny, warm and clear during the day, but by early evening it got incredibly windy and pretty cool, so we picked one of the last good weekends to go.


The view of St. Stefanos from our hostel - it was a much shorter walk from the hostel than it appears from this picture.


The infamous grilled cheese!


The pelican is a mythologically important bird to Myknos, and a few giant ones roam freely around the island. This one was hanging out in a taverna on Friday night.


There's a neighborhood on the island called Little Venice, and it's home to cute seaside stores and restaurants, as well as some very old windmills (not sure how old though...). If you click on the picture you can see just how windy it was.


The sunset in Mykonos - there are no words...