Days 17 & 18- Mykonos

Apparently Mykonos is the Greek word for expensive, just about everything here costs significantly more than anywhere else we've been. We got here yesterday afternoon after a quick, but very bumpy, ferry ride from Paros. After choosing a hotel from the many sign toting promoters who greeted us at the port we took a bus down to one of the beaches.

We thought about renting the bikes for an extra day and getting there that way, but ultimately decided that we didn't want to pass up the opportunity to walk into the bus station and ask for 2 tickets to paradise (beach). We spent the rest of the afternoon there, near a beach front club where the DJ was constantly begging beachgoers, in very broken English to come to the stage. On our way to the beach the bus seemed to be serving the purpose of a school bus, dropping off several elementary and middle school aged kids along the way. By the time we caught a bus back into town it had turned into the Greek version of the P2P (that's the late night bus that shuttles students from campus to Franklin St for those of you that have not had the privilege of attending UNC).

We ate a relatively late dinner and then had time to watch several episodes of the office before heading out last night, apparently no one here goes out until at least midnight.

This morning... well, technically it was afternoon, we got up and rented bikes to get around the island for the day. Our first stop, which we accidentally got to by taking a wrong turn, was Psarou (sp?) beach, which was by far the most crowded beach we'd been to until that point. We spent a little bit of time swimming there, but opted not to pay 4 euro for a beach chair. From Psarou we went to Super Paradise beach, which turned out to be much more like a dance club with a sandy floor than it was like a beach. There was a packed club right on the beach and even more people than Psarou taking up just about every square foot of sand. Again we just swam for a little while before heading out.

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around the island (often on roads that were about as wide as cart paths and sometimes almost as steep as Rialto St). We stopped at a few more beaches, but they were all but deserted by the time we got to them.

We got back to town in time to eat dinner and now we're obviously in an internet cafe. Hopefully from here on we'll be able to find hostels/hotels with internet access more easily. Tomorrow afternoon we're heading back to Athens and then Sunday we'll (hopefully) be flying to Germany.