Islands of the Month: A Greek Trio
Spend a few hours cruising around the Aegean Sea south of Greece,
and it's not hard to slip into the adventures of Odysseus on his 10-year-long trip back to Ithaca from the Trojan War. You can almost see yourself battling a three-headed monster on one island, steering clear of the Sirens on another and matching wits with the witch-goddess Circe (who turned you and the rest of the guys into pigs for awhile) on still another.
This story is about three of the Aegean islands: One known for its good times and another for its old times. On the third, you'll see what happens when time runs out.
The first two are Mykonos and Delos, about a 15-minute boat ride apart.
They're both huge tourism magnets, but for vastly different reasons.
The swinger of the pair is the 40-square-mile island of Mykonos, known as “the place where the world goes to party.” Merry-makers pour in almost around the clock on jetliners and private planes and on an armada of water ferries, yachts and small boats from the Greek mainland.
During the day, thousands of tourists from Baby Boomers to babes in arms jam the outdoor tables of wall-to-wall tavernas lining the island's beachfront village. Other visitors take up so much room on the beaches – including “clothing optional” stretches here and there – it's hard to see the sand.
It's at night, though, when Mykonos really comes alive. Dozens of bars such as Paradise, Super Paradise, Space Bar (capacity: about 1,000), Celebrities and Skandinavian are packed through the morning. There, dreadlocked DJs whip the crowds into frenzies with tunes running from the disco hits of the old-time Village People to the techno blitzes of bands like Apokolypse and BlueZeus.
After that, it's back to the island's 50 or so hotels, inns and villas for a few hours of sleep before another day of people-watching from the tavernas, dodging taxis and motorscooters on the town's narrow walkway and trying to elbow in on the beaches. And then another night of flipping your arms to “YMCA,” belting down shots of ouzo, whooping it up on table tops and trying to get the hang of Zorba-style circle dancing.
Does anyone else come to Mykonos other than party people? Local tourism officials want you to know that plenty of hotels cater to the quieter crowd, and on a good number of beaches you'll hardly ever hear a boom box.
A day on Delos
The Greeks love a good legend, and none more than the tale of how their sacred island of Delos came about. One version of the story goes back to 3,000 B.C., when the big buzz on Mt. Olympus was that Zeus, the god of gods, was about to become a proud daddy, thanks to his girlfriend Leto. The dad-to-be's delight, however, wasn't shared by Mrs. Zeus – who let it be known that the ruler of any land or island who allowed the shady lady to give birth on his turf would be turned into a frog.
But Zeus wasn't the top god for nothing. He got his pal Poseidon, god of the sea, to simply push a new island out of the waters. And up came Delos, where the Greek's legendary superstar Apollo and his twin sister Artemis first saw the light of the bright Aegean sunshine.
Temples had to be built to mark that event, of course, and along with them homes, courtyards, fountains, sports arenas, theaters and even what amounts to shopping malls. Delos soon became the religious hot spot of the Aegean, a distinction it held for a thousand years.
Fast forward to today, and ferries full of tourists from Mykonos start arriving at Delos around 9 a.m. Visitors are free to explore the island's archaeological wonders until 3 p.m. -- about the time some merry-makers back on Mykonos are getting up – when everyone has to leave the island. Only a few guards are allowed to stay.
Among highlights of the ruins is a sacred lake said to be the actual place where Apollo and Artemis were born. From there, paths take you to the much-photographed Terrace of the Lions (dedicated to Apollo around 600 B.C.), the House of Dionysus (a 2nd century B.C. private home) and the Platform of the Stoibadeion (dedicated to the Greek god of wine and pleasure Dionysus, also known as Bacchus).
Archaeological items too precious to be left outside can be seen in a museum on a hill overlooking the main section of the ruins. Next to the museum is a little snack bar (the only one on the island) offering fresh orange juice, watermelon pieces and sandwiches, all at outrageously high prices. A tip: bring your own snacks and drinks along.
You'll leave Delos from the dock area where you arrived – and where back in the good old days 120,000 other strangers came and went each year in chains. It seems the Greeks were too busy praying and playing to do menial things like cleaning the house and tossing the trash. So they brought in slaves (mainly prisoners captured in the Persian wars) by the boatload to the auction blocks of Delos; there, buyers from all over the Aegean came to add the strongest, smartest and prettiest to their household staffs.
Santorini: A blast from the past
For travelers who've done most of their sightseeing closer to home, the screaming discos of Mykonos might bring back memories of nights in Cancun or Las Vegas. And Delos might take you back to the Mayans' sacred island of Cozumel.
But I can't recall a place even remotely similar to Santorini.
Think of a mountainous, moon-shaped island about eight miles across. Then imagine the island shaped like a crescent, with its whole left side gone. Some 3,600 years ago, that's what happened to the Minoan island of Thera when a giant volcano blew its lid right through that dot in the Aegean.
Seawater filled the gap left by the blast, creating a lagoon about twice the size of the Las Vegas strip. Sheared off by the explosion, cliffs a thousand feet high were left edging three sides of the lagoon.
Geologists say the eruption created a tsunami wave that was so big – perhaps the height of a 10 story building – that it wiped out Crete (70 miles away) and went on to tear up the beaches at spots as far away as the Israeli coast.
Fast forward to today, and the island of Thera, now Santorini, is again triggering tsunamis. Only now they're headed the other way, bringing tidal waves of tourists to the island on planes, cruise ships and water ferries.
The bulk of Santorini's visitors arrive on ferry boats and high-speed catamarans from Greece's main port at Piraeus around 130 miles away. About a half-hour from the island, passengers start doing double-takes as Santorini's snow-capped cliffs come into view. Snow-capped? As you get closer in, the snow turns into thousands of whitewashed buildings crowning and running down the hillsides, seemingly built on top of each other.
A cable car near the dock area whisks visitors up the cliffs to the island's main city at Fira in just a few minutes. Or you can walk up 588 steep, zig-zagging steps. Or ride up the steps on donkeys.
During the summer, it's not unusual to see huge cruise ships anchored all over the lagoon – from Fira, looking like toy boats in a giant bathtub – while regularly scheduled jet flights from Athens (about a 40-minute hop) zip overhead to the Santorini airport. On peak travel days, the scheduled flights are joined by charter jets from airports across Europe.
Little did the ancient Minoans know that their big blast would some day create big-time tourism.
Visitors pack the narrow lanes winding through Fira, many stopping at shops offering exquisite jewelry, classic Greek pottery and hand-woven clothing. Others jam the city's bars and outdoor restaurants looking down at the eight-mile-long lagoon (not surprisingly, the better the view of the hillsides and the bluer-than-blue waters, the steeper the prices).
There's one time of the day when patrons are willing to pay just about
anything for an outside seat at Fira or the nearby town of Oia: at sunset, when spectacular, sherbet-colored skies fill the heavens over the lagoon and as far as you can see beyond that.
History buffs can opt for a tour of the island on buses leaving from the dock area. Along the way, guides point out remnants of the days when Santorini was a colony of the Minoans, then of the Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Venetians (who named the island Santorini after Saint Irene) and the Turks. Santorini hooked up with Greece again in 1912.
The bus tours end in a hair-raising drive up the narrow, winding mountain roads to Fira (from which most tourists take the cable car back down to the docks).
Stayover guests have a choice of 150 or so places to bed down around the island. They range from upscale hotels with stunning views of the lagoon for hundreds of dollars a night – like the restaurants, the better the view, the higher the price – to older, view-less inns for as little as $50 a night.
More info: Visit the Greek National Tourism Organisation's site at www.greektourism.gr. Helpful info can also be found on www.santorini.gr, www.santorini.com, mykonos-greece.biz, and on commerical sites such as www.frommers.com or www.tripadvisor.com.