"You are so lucky you live in Greece, you must go to Mykonos all the time"
Well, of course, I don't.
Like most Greek islands, including Crete, Mykonos is basically 'closed' during the winter which is the only time that I have when I can go anywhere. which rather shoots down one gay travel web site that announces it as 'an all year round' destination. Yes there are people living on Mykonos, about 10,000 of them. Although on Crete we have a permanent population of well over 500,000 so it is a bit more lively.
Anyway when the chance arose to spend four days on Mykonos in July, and all I had to do was pay for a ferry ticket, then of course I took it. Who wouldn't?
And after all it is well over 30 years since I was last there, although I have to admit that I don't remember a lot of about the trip and any photographs I had long since disappeared, and my travelling companion at the time has since passed away.
Arriving by ferry (cruising is such a civilised way of getting around the Greek islands), I was struck by how brown and barren the island seems to be, Crete is lush tropical paradise by comparison. And although the whole island is not 'built up' there certainly are a lot more buildings than there were way back in the 70's. The windmills are still there as you come into the port. Well nearly all of them are as one of them is in the process of being rebuilt. I seem to remember that there were more windmills, but maybe not. Even from the quayside you can see that Mykonos Town has grown but they have managed to preserve the character to some extent by using the traditional architectural style. Square and blocky with rounded corners, presumably this is to offer less resistance to the incessant wind that blew the whole time I was there. A common feature of the climate in July and August I was told.
Mykonos is a small island, about 30 square miles (imagine a rectangle 5 miles by 6 miles, and a walking pace of 4 miles per hour....), and with a landscape dotted with buildings this doesn't leave a lot of space for visitors who really want to 'get away from it all'. So you can compare this to Crete which has an area of around 3000 square miles......
So Mykonos is a gay island....
Hmmmmm, well you can ignore the couple of gay travel web sites that tell you that Mykonos welcomes millions of gay tourists each year. Actual tourist figures for Mykonos seem a bit sketchy, but the generally accepted figure is around a million in total. I did wonder about the logistics of this, as getting about 40,000 people on and off the island every week does seem a bit of a challenge, although there are figures on Wikipedia that say there are 40,000 available beds on the island. I didn't check the airport schedules at the time (will do that next year!), but I am inclined to think that included in that figure are all the passengers on cruise ships that stopover, many of these do not actually get off the ship of course, and from watching the tenders on the Sunday morning before my departure most of the people that did get off, got straight on to the ferries going to Delos.
I think you can ignore the web sites that tell you that it is normal to see gay men walking hand in hand too. Being something of a people watcher, I can spend two hours with one cup of coffee, (it's normal in Greece), and I didn't see any.
So how many gay visitors are going to Mykonos?
Well as we don't have bar codes or chips implanted behind our ears that get scanned as we enter or leave a place, that is an impossible question to answer.
But we can use a little modern technology to roughly gauge the percentage out of the total gay visitors to Greece and to Mykonos. Two of the most popular 'social networking' sites, Gaydar, and Gayromeo, have sections where you can post your travel plans. Yes I know not everyone uses these so we can only use them as a guide.
For the week that I was on Mykonos, (the last week in July 2012), on Gaydar there were more guys visiting Crete than Mykonos, and on Gayromeo there were only two more visiting Mykonos than Crete. Overall more guys were visiting the rest of Greece (on both web sites) than there were visiting Mykonos.
What was also very clear that while many were staying on Crete (or indeed other islands), most travellers to Mykonos were only staying 2 or 3 days, a fact that borne out by our island hopping guests at Villa Ralfa, many of whom were spending 7 or 10 days on Crete, followed by a couple of days on Santorini, and then 2 or 3 nights on Mykonos.
Several times I logged on to Grindr while I was on Mykonos too, that gave the interesting result that there were fewer guys on the 'front page' on Mykonos than there normally are on Crete. The only difference there is that on Crete they are in a 20km radius and on Mykonos they were in a 5km radius.
So there are a load of gay bars on Mykonos...
Actually apparently not. During my three night stay, at the risk of developing chronic alcoholic poisoning, I tried to visit as many as possible at different times, and all of them were mixed, but don't let that put you off. The guys were mainly in the majority!
(Checking web sites, if you can find them, I don't think that any of them actually say they are 'gay bars'. Obviously in Mykonos they are even more conservative than we are on Crete, at least our two gay bars say they are exactly that)
And here I can best quote a straight American couple who I met at Babylon, who told me that they frequent gay bars because they are usually the liveliest and best places to go and they were surprised by "how restrained the gay scene is on Mykonos". And they had been there a week.
And the bars themselves?
Top bar has to be The Piano Bar, cosy, friendly, and with excellent music. So nice to get a decent cabaret with a REAL singer and pianist these days instead of blaring pop music. Both of the guys behind the bar were from Crete, which must tell you something!
Next has to be Babylon, which is actually the first bar I went to on arrival night. Jackie O's is right next door so when you are outside in the throng, you are really in both of them at the same time! The great thing about both of these is the big outside space on the quayside.
Preference is for Babylon because the guys made me really welcome and found the time to talk to me which is always nice when you are a lone traveller. They seated me next to the door on the fence with Jackie O's which is a great place to sit as you can look down on everyone else. The next night I went there they came and got me from the crowd and planted me in the same place, even though the beer I had came from Jackie O's. The music is loud in both places but as they seem to share the same play list you never get the cacophony that is common if you have two lots of music at once.
Porta Bar is fascinating when you eventually find it. Not many people there when I tried it, but with two levels and two entrances it could make life interesting if not a little confusing, while I was there a man came in from the town hall collecting money, first in the bottom entrance and then at the top. I think he was just a bit disturbed that he wasn't going to collect two lots of money! Excellent barman too, insisted that for a slightly upset stomach the cure was obviously 7 * Metaxa, taken neat and sipped slowly.
Kastro Bar was one of my early evening visits so there were only a couple of people in there, but nice surroundings and, of course, the nice little alleyway at the side leading down to the sea........
Some of the bars have drag shows. If you are really unfortunate you will get to see one. I say unfortunate because if they are all like the one I saw then you are in for the worst drag show ever.
Sunset seems to be a popular time for bars too. I couldn't really see why because to be honest the sunset was the same three nights in a row, and not very interesting at that. I suspect that this is just a ruse to part you from your hard earned cash early in the evening. Or maybe I have just seen too many sunsets?
A word of warning/advice here too. Taxis are about as common as hens' teeth on Mykonos. If you are out for a good night in the bars of Mykonos Town and you are staying further than walking distance be prepared for a loooong wait for a cab. Up to two hours is nothing. Part of this is due to the taxi drivers 'selecting' people from the queue, that are all going in the same direction and that he can conveniently drop off in turn. Having said that they don't cheat you and fares are reasonable, but looking at it another way he has just put four people that don't know each other in a cab and charged them €10 each, which would get you from Heraklion Airport to Hersonissos which is about 25km, and you cannot actually go that far on Mykonos!
Of course you can always use the solution tried and tested by two guys from Manchester......Catch the last bus into the Town, go for something to eat, spend all night drinking and dancing and catch the first bus back to your hotel in the morning!
Mykonos is expensive....
Yes. But not always.
You will read on some web sites that it is expensive because it has to import everything from the mainland.
This is nonsense.
You can expect to pay €6 or more for a small bottle of beer in a bar, €8 or more for a long drink (spirit and mixer), and cocktails START at €10....My personal favourite at a sunset bar was €12 for a Campari and soda.
Crete is further from the mainland than Mykonos and yet a small beer is €2.50, maybe €3, a long drink is usually €6 and cocktails about the same.
Something similar applies to food. A gyros, our indigenous fast food, is about the same price on Mykonos as on Crete, but then you can find places on Mykonos where a Greek salad will cost you €10.50, whereas on Crete a Greek salad will set you back €4.50/5.00.
But you can find places on Mykonos where a Greek salad and a beer can be had for the same price as Crete, and right on the waterfront in Mykonos Town too!
Hotels too can be expensive, although they are rarely full it seems. I tried making last minute bookings while I was there at several and all had rooms available, provided you could spare €150 per night or more. On the other hand there is 'hostel' accommodation at €18 a night (share a room with five other people you have never met, sounds like fun), and this was all fully booked. Crete on the other hand has a wide selection of accommodation from around €25 a night.
Some of this price difference can be put down to the cost of real estate of course. Mykonos is, after all, only a small island so rents and real estate generally will tend to be of higher value, but when you can find such price differences within 100 metres of each other you do tend to wonder!
And so to the beach!
Or not in this case.......Saturday was to have been my 'beach day'...Just to have a look as it were because I don't really do the beach. I have enough lines and wrinkles already, but when in Rome etc.
Unfortunately something I had eaten, and I know what it was, had made going too far from a lavatory a bit of a no-no. I did get as far as Paradise beach, (which is not known as a gay beach), because I could do it easily on the bus, and was quite frankly not impressed. Row upon row of sunbeds (with a large sign saying 'Don't blame us for the price of the sunbed, the money is for the Government'), and umbrellas. And at the back of the beach a row of bars with nearly identical menus and all charging the same prices. At 10.30am on a Saturday, there were not a lot of people there. I would hate to think what it was like if it was crowded.
But this gave me time to have a good wander around the maze that is Mykonos Town, there are loads of cafes where I can make a dash to if I needed the lavatory!
Photogenic is the best word here, indeed I have seen photgraphs of Mykonos posted on web sites belonging to other islands, and if you want to shop then you have plenty of opportunity.
Having worked in a gift shop on Crete I have a bit of experience of some of the things you are likely to come across so I was not particularly impressed when one shop owner told me that a piece of ceramic work was 'local' when it fact it is made by an artist on Crete, or the shop that was selling work by an artist from Naxos who actually works in Athens but saying that was local too.
There are the usual number of shops selling jewellery too, and while you are not getting ripped off as far as the standard of the metal goes, it does get a bit wearing being told that it is made in Greece when you can buy exactly the same designs in Peru and Chile. The prices are fair enough and you can usually get some discount!
So what else is there to do on Mykonos?
Apart from the three B's, not a lot else. There are a couple of museums and some interesting churches and one of the sole saving graces of Mykonos for those who are interested is the birthpace of Apollo on a completely different island, Delos.
This archaeological site is huge, it rivals the Acropolis in interest, and the Palace of Knossos on Crete for size. The true archaeological buff would need to catch the first ferry in the morning and the last one back to even begin to get a good look at it, and although parts of it are slightly 'unkempt' it has not suffered from too much reconstruction, the museum is nicely laid out and the cafe next door, even though it has a captive audience, does not overcharge.
Sadly I suspect that many would rather spend their money on three rather overpriced beers than pay the ferry fare and entrance fee to go to Delos.
So the magic question...Should you go to Mykonos?
It's a small island with a big personality, (a bit like Santorini), and its reputation as a gay destination has been around for 40 years or so.
A lot of things have changed in that time.
Other destinations are available especially as most gay travellers are a bit more discerning these days and are not always just going for a week long orgy (if that is what you want then go to Santiago de Chile, and the drag shows are better than Mykonos. Well slightly).
In general it does not appear to me to be quite as gay as the publicity, much of it derived from outside Greece and some of it hopelessly out of date by the way, would have us believe. But big business is in play here and many of those web sites you see promoting it are getting a commission on the hotel rooms they sell.
If you are gay and are cruising the Greek islands, and it is on your 'Bucket List', then splurge for a few nights and do it!
Would I go again?
Are you paying?
Not unless I had a good reason, such as an old and dear friend holding his 60th birthday party there, or maybe a wedding, or christening, or funeral.
Living on Crete I have got used to the wide open spaces, and let's face it, on Crete I can go away for a weekend without leaving the island........
