The "Heavenly Crystal" on which we were following, coming from the Athenian port of Piraeus, it docked in Mykonos at table time, at seven in the morning. It is not the first cruise of the day to anchor on the island. It wouldn't be the last. We disembark for one of the usual glorious days of the Aegean summer: blue skies, like at least half the Greek flag. Azulão in the image of the variants that break the white of the houses on.
As far as they can be said, Mykonos maintains in these traditional homes some ten thousand inhabitants. When May arrives, if not in April, it welcomes a migration of visitors from all over.
Some arrive by sea, others by air. Some, eager to unveil the civilizational core of the Cyclades, its history and the architectural and cultural heritage there. Others – the vast majority, it has to be said – flow in, attracted by the aura of high-end, ever-young hedonistic, fit and fashionable destiny.
Harmonious but eccentric architecture of the Orthodox Church of
We disembark to the cement of the pier that surrounds the fishing bay at the entrance to Hora. The surrounding terraces are soon filled with guests devoted to Greek gastronomic specialities. The little beach below Polikandrioti Street welcomes dozens of tourist souls who sacrificed meals in the restaurants on the waterfront for the magic potion of the sun and the gentle Aegean sea.
We enter the labyrinth of alleys to the south of the waterfront and abstract as far as we can from the commercial blemish, inevitable on a tiny island that receives about two million outsiders a year.
We let ourselves be enchanted by the simple elegance of the houses: the blue or red domes, doors, windows, balconies and handrails, highlighted by the countless white walls. The bougainvilleas and other lush vines spread and hang from the balconies and terraces, fertilized by the financial bonanza that tourism lent Mykonos.
A passerby walks along a traditional street in Hora, the city of Mykonos.
An Exquisite Island, A Must-Have Island of Influencers
Even at this hot hour, we pass through nooks that are already worn out from being so trampled and portrayed by the influencers vying for the island. We often find them in action. In disguised lines, waiting their turn to extend the reflectors to touch up the makeover and produce the cloned and “enviable” photos and videos with which crowds of followers are loyal.
The breezes of post-teenage sophistication and sophistication that flowed into Mykonos from the 1960s onwards have not stopped blowing since the gay invasion of that time. Surrendered to the benefits of the new air, Mykonos readjusted.
The former homes of fishing families are now boutique hotels and boutiques, bars, restaurants, glamorous shops of everything and countless private businesses registered on Booking, AirBnB and the like. These are island mines that fill the bank accounts of residents and investors during the spring-summer season and allow them to cross the winter fallow without any problems, when almost everything in Mykonos remains closed.
Gift shop in an alley in Hora, Mykonos.
These are easy gains, undreamed of in the early decades of the XNUMXth century, a time when, after the opening of the Corinthian Channel and the First World War, the inhabitants of Mykonos found themselves the victim of an unexpected commercial decline and were forced to emigrate to the Greek continent and to the most diverse countries in the world, especially for the United States. In the course of history, the Greek gods seem to have taken into account the proximity of Mykonos to Delos, the holy sanctuary of Apollo. And they protected the matching myconia.
Little Venice. Little Venice in the Hellenic Way
In Delos' place, the local Little Venice's alternative fringe is the cult haunt of the gay mob, fashion princesses and well-traveled VIPs. They wander in Mykonos, sculptural and dressed in exorbitant rags. To his undisguised disgust, Mykonos also opened doors to an older and more careless populace, “the fault of the cruises”, we hear evil tongues intrigue in the sun.
Later in the afternoon, we round the rounded corners of the Paraportiani Orthodox Church and head down the Agion Anargiron alley that zigzags towards Little Venice. We walked determined to discover how and why that Cycladic sample of Venice had become so popular.
But, we advance a few meters and find ourselves blocked by the pedestrian traffic in the area. The alley is barely two people across. As if that wasn't enough, there are a succession of shops with handicrafts and souvenirs hanging outside. Some tourists stop to one side to examine something. Others imitate us from the opposite side. This creates chaotic queues that, when thousands of passengers on three or more cruise ships roam the town at the same time, prove to be almost insurmountable.
With Chinese patience, we hope that the great bell-group that precedes us will open the way. After which we cut to the Venetias alley to soon find ourselves with a stream of terrace bars that met the gentle waves of the Aegean. There, couples in love, groups of friends entertained sipping gin, cocktails and beer, prolong airy gatherings and rehearse selfies and selfies, drowned in big pillows or leaning back in director's chairs.
Friends are photographed on the terrace of Little Venice.
As the name of the place indicates, the buildings semi-sunken in the sea were erected in the XNUMXth century, in the period when the Venetians controlled Mykonos and many other Greek islands, until, in the XNUMXth century, the Ottomans took over them.
Two of the 5 mills in the Kato Mili set.
Kato Milli's popular mills
Another unique architectural ensemble of Venetian origin, more than beaten by the iinfluencers and addicted to selfies, is formed by the five mills of Kato Mili (mills from below).
In the Venetian era, the main production of arid Mykonos was wheat. Taking into account the constancy of the Meltemi winds (from the Italian bad weather), around the XNUMXth century, mills processing the cereal began to be installed. A few dozen were even counted. Today, there are sixteen left. Of these, even devoid of its white sails but more accessible and exposed to the sunset, the corner of Kato Mili preserves an obvious protagonism.
As soon as the setting sun begins to clear the sky towards the west, groups of restless visitors place themselves in privileged places to enjoy the diving of the great star and register it embellished by the silhouettes of the mills.
Crowd of sunset worshipers on Little Venice Beach.
The sunset drags on, in a Greek register, without haste or unforeseen events. We have plenty of time to walk among the mills, to contemplate the golden facades of Little Venice and to go down to the beach below Kato Mili. When we got there, visitors to the island were heavily concentrated on the wall of the seafront and on the adjoining beach, with smartphones and cameras in hand.
There's only a background hum that the wind blows with the music near the bars. Little by little, the sun sinks between a large cruise ship at anchor offshore and a schooner anchored to provide paying passengers an advantageous contemplation compared to those on land.
We had just entered June. With four more months of posts from its backdrops and twilights, Mykonos will gain thousands of new followers.
Visitors to Mykonos admire the sunset.
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