Check out time for Santorini, we bid our farewells and wait for our taxi to the port outside the hotel. 10 minutes pass after the scheduled time so I head back inside to get them to check if it is still coming. I am told that it will be here within the next 2 minutes. Close enough, 3 minutes later a taxi screeches up and bundles us in, before heading off the wrong way up the road. The driver tells us that there was a “problem” with our taxi, and he is actually picking someone else up, but he is sure we will be on time. We pick up the other people and head for the port.
Sure enough we are there by around 10:10, with some “interesting” driving by our driver. As it turns out it doesn't really matter because our boat arrives 30 minutes late anyway. This seems to be the running theme this morning, as all the other boats are running late as well by the looks of things. Our boat this morning is supposed to be a fast one, the JetBoat “SuperJet”. It turns up and it sure looks fast, but it is a lot smaller than our boat on the way across. This should be interesting.
Celina tells me now, but didn't want to tell me at the time, that the water seems choppier than it should be. I manage to hold out quite well until about half an hour from our first stop, which unfortunately is not OUR stop. I am forced to make use of those paper bags they make available just as we are pulling into the dock of the island of Ios.
10 minutes later we are underway again, and I am feeling a little better, probably because I am exhausted. Unfortunately about 30 minutes in this time I begin to deteriorate rapidly and utilise another 2 paper bags. I feel really bad about this mainly for Celina and the people around me, I'm sure it's not a pleasant thing to be around.
The second stop, around an hour later, is at the island of Naxos, which is actually the largest island of the Cyclades group. We are informed at this point that due to the condition of the seas, our boat is too small to continue on to our final destination, Mykonos, for the foreseeable future. This makes things difficult for us as we are only supposed to be in Mykonos for one day, and then catch a final ferry back to the mainland to continue our trip. The boat line operators offer to give us tickets on the next ferry going to Mykonos that is large enough to be allowed to make the journey to Mykonos, the HighSpeed 2. I had noticed this boat at Piraeus and was quite impressed with it so this was not all bad news necessarily.
The bad news was that this boat did not leave for another 6 hours or so, so we had that long to kill in Naxos. We went and grabbed a large late lunch, so we could skip dinner. After that we had a bit of a walk around, and then we tried my way of holidaying, sitting by the beach doing nothing but enjoying the sea and the air. Celina lasted about 10 minutes before having to go for another walk and find something to do. I was there for about an hour or so before feeling like some ice cream. Twas a relaxing afternoon.
Sunset over Naxos
We head towards the dock around half an hour before our departure time, along with all the other poor buggers who got stuck here in the same situation. HighSpeed 2 finally arrives, and we board, and this boat kicks ass! It's a great boat, much bigger than the SuperJet earlier in the day, and a lot more luxurious. We end up leaving Naxos at around 22:00 (no need for paper bags on this sector), which unfortunately meant that we didn't arrive in Mykonos until 23:30. This was with no map, no information, and no idea of where our hotel was located other than “School of Fine Arts area”. On the positive side, if you're going to land somewhere at midnight on a Saturday night, Mykonos is probably a good place to choose, from the point of view that there are still plenty of people around. However a lot of them are pretty weak. We asked a few people where this area was and they all said “far, other side of the city, you are better to take a taxi”. They obviously have no idea how we roll. We tried waiting for a taxi, but at this time of night on this night, they are as rare as rocking-horse doo-doo. So we give the hotel where we are staying a call, who luckily have a 24 hour desk, and tell them where we are, and how do we walk to your hotel?
It takes around 15 minutes all up, so I have no idea what all these naysayers were talking about when they said “better to take a taxi”. The last step is up a really steep hill, but we finally arrive, and basically fall into bed, after setting the A/C in the room to “cold”. Phew!
No comments:
Post a Comment