Okay, I'll have to admit, I didn't do much in Mykonos except for lie on a beach and eat food. Nonetheless, here is a blog post about how I was a beach bum, albeit only for a couple days. Mykonos is known for its partying, but I was too lazy to party haha! Just wanted to take it easy, explore the city, and lie on the beautiful sand beaches! Of course, first things first, when we got to our Airbnb/hotel in Mykonos that was basically just on a beach, we found some food right away. Our Airbnb was located on a small beach called Paralia Megali Ammos, and there was a little restaurant at the end of the beach, so that's where we went (the place was called Joanna's Nikos Place Taverna). Here, I had moussaka (a classic Greek dish), and stuffed grilled squid, both of which were delicious!
After lunch, we headed into the main city (I think it's just called Mykonos/Mikonos haha) to explore a bit. The architecture is similar to Santorini's, with white walls and colourful (mostly blue) accents. The town is super cute, and there are lots of cute stores as well. We didn't really do much, just wandered around, and the town is pretty small so it didn't take that long.
After our walk, we returned to our hotel and ordered some food in, since we had a late lunch, and just hung out. Although Mykonos is known for its partying, we didn't really want to do that so we just relaxed and then went to bed.
The next day, we actually spent the whole day at Paradise beach. From our hotel, we walked to the bus stop in town and took the bus to the south part of the island where Paradise beach was. Paradise beach is usually a party beach, but since we were here in the shoulder season, it wasn't too crowded with party-goers yet. We decided to pay for a couple of beach chairs with an umbrella so we could be comfortable on the beach all day. We had a really relaxing day - except for a managed to get a deep cut on my knee while wading around in the waters. The water at Paradise beach is quite shallow, and a few meters in, there is a rock ledge. When I was out there, the waves were a little bumpy and pushed me into the rocks, where I cut my knee. :( It bled a lot, but luckily my friend had a first aid kid so she helped me patch it up, but no more swimming for me after that.
Afterwards, we returned to our hotel to freshen up for dinner - and managed to catch the sunset by the beach as well!
We wandered back into the town for some dinner and found a place for dinner, called Niko's Tavern. Had some meat and seafood there, and it was fairly decent! Mykonos is definitely a touristy place though as well as pretty small, so I think prices are higher and quality is not as good as food elsewhere in Greece. I would say that even Santorini, one of the most touristy places in Europe, had better selections for food.
For our last half-day in Mykonos, and last full day in Greece, we did nothing again! :D We went to the restaurant at the beach by our hotel again, since the food was really good last time, and this time we had some fish and a delicious chickpea salad. As you can see, I forgot to take a picture until I was halfway done the chickpea salad, but it was actually such a delicious salad, if only I could figure out how to recreate it...
The nice thing about this restaurant is that if you eat there, you can use their beach chairs by the restaurant afterwards, so that's what we did while we killed time before our flight back to Athens. We had noticed that at many of the beaches around Greece, including in Santorini, there were Chinese ladies walking around asking people if they wanted massages. There was a lady doing the same as well on the beach we were at, so one of my friends started chatting her up and asking her about what she was doing all the way in Greece. She told us her story about how she and her son left China as a stowaway on a boat, after her husband had travelled to Greece a few years before. They had a convenience store in Athens, while she worked in Mykonos during the holiday season to offer massages to tourists to help make money. It sounded like a really tough life - she shared a room with three other women who did the same thing, and during the shoulder season they are lucky if they can even make 50 euros a day. I guess there is some kind of massage mafia where you have to pay to be able to use the beach - for the more popular beaches like Paradise beach where you can make more money, you have to pay more to be able to work there. Anyway, it was interesting to hear about, and I figured that I could use a massage since I'd been carrying around a big heavy backpack for so long!
Once it was almost time for our flight, we headed to the airport to go back to Athens, where we stayed in an Airbnb close to the airport so that we could fly out again the next day, on to Croatia! I did like Mykonos, but I think now that I've been once, I don't need to come back and I would rather explore some other Greek islands. The beaches were really beautiful, but I'm sure they are as well on other islands where people don't go there just for the partying. However, I would really recommend the hotel (Markos Beach Hotel)/area we stayed in, it's a short walk from the main city where all the buses/food are, and it was on a small, quieter beach, plus the restaurant on that beach is so delicious!