Wandering Mykonos & Seeing its Museum

So we had quite a time in Delos, but part of the point in this trip was to relax… not as much chasing experiences, more letting the (very significant, hurricane-like) wind blow us where it may. The vibe coding of vacations, if you will. On one of our days the agenda consisted of going to town and poking at things until dinner time. Naturally this didn’t feel too urgent so the day also consisted of a lounge-y snooze and a late breakfast. But, eventually, we made our way into the one dot on the map bigger than a pixel.

Mykonos, the town, aka “Chora” aka “Mykonos Town” aka “Old Mykonos,” a town with a name for every 2000 people or so. The entire island’s population is under 11,000, and while there are several villages sprinkled over the island, Mykonos Town is the only place you can call a “population center” with a straight face. These days the only real industry on this island is tourism; we were there in the shoulder season and we still saw at least six different cruise ships in the three days that we were there. With all that said, you’d probably expect that the one real town on the island would be one giant tourist trap. And yet, while it’s true there were plenty of tchotchke opportunities (tchotchketunities?) the town actually managed to keep a natural, lived-in feel to it.

Part of that is the layout of the town which, owing to keeping most of the town reserved as a pedestrian zone, has never widened any streets… or paved them for that matter. The narrow, meandering streets don’t encourage fast moving. You may not be in a browsing mood, but you’re sailing against the tide if you try to get somewhere with alacrity. Then again, it was a warm day with blue skies and we had nowhere in particular to be . . . why hurry to be anywhere? We spent a pleasant afternoon poking around the town, and while we aren’t big shoppers we felt the siren song of linen – by which I mean every 2nd person we looked at was wearing linen and with the sun and the breeze we totally got it. Lisa got a lovely caftan, hand-dyed by the owner of Efharis Mykonos in Little Venice (she’s delightful!), and John indulged in a a full set of linen pants and a top.

Once we had our fill of the heart of the central bit of town, including lunch at a place where we sat eye level, and maybe five feet away from, the lapping waters of the harbor, we meandered up a hill, away from the water and up to the Archaeological Museum of Mykonos. Despite the lofty name it was a modest building that had to be pointed out to us it was so unassuming. That said, I don’t think it’s possible to be the official collection of historical artifacts on an island in the Cyclades without having some good stuff. The highlight is probably the “Mykonos Pithos (jug)”, which has one of the earliest depictions yet found of the Trojan Horse. There’s also a deceptively-modest statue of a woman in profile that is actually one of the earliest examples of “monumental” sculpture. The word monumental, in this case, only partially relates to size, but also to its function within architecture rather than being a a stand-alone work of art. It’s a simple building of just a few rooms that even a thorough perusal will consume in an hour or two, but after a day of scenery and shopping it was nice to dip our toes in the history and culture of the island.

The point of this day was to lean into the “vacation” vibe rather than chasing experiences, so it felt like a successful day already. Sucking up the wild taxi prices (taxis were a flat rate of thirty euros, and we never went more than a couple of kilometers. But, they were a hilly couple of kilometers so it was (nominally) worth it) we moseyed back to our hotel and settled in for a quiet evening; we didn’t even leave the property, just took dinner in the on-site restaurant whose name, “επαρκής”, translates to “adequate.” I kid. By the end of the day I think we’d hit the point of fully recalibrating to the island vibe, and it felt great.