Mykonos 101: What You Might Not Expect On Holiday

Now of course, it goes without saying that Mykonos holds beautiful beaches, amazing food and picturesque views, as after all, this is Greece we’re talking about. Mykonos is famously known for its painted white walls that make every street corner “Instagram-worthy”. You’d find it a stretch not to take hundreds of pictures of the commonly themed, blue or red door houses, or the brightly coloured flowers, beautifully framing someone’s front door steps.

I could go on for hours and hours, talking about how scenic Mykonos is, and how tasty the food is, but you’d expect that. I’m going to share things that I didn’t expect on my holiday to Mykonos, or quite frankly, didn’t even really consider.

Firstly, let’s talk about transport. If you’re anything like me on holiday, you’ll be relying on Uber rides, taxis, and public transport to get you around. Sometimes walking around in 35-degree heat just isn’t an option if you want to avoid unattractive sweat patches in places where no one should visibly see them. All my ladies particularly know what I’m talking about!

For public transport in Mykonos Town, there are two bus stations, with buses running every half an hour to specific parts of the island. Of course, where my boyfriend and I stayed, past the port, there were no buses. This was that classic example of what happens when you don’t have a checklist of things to consider when planning for a holiday [I’ll be posting a blog around holiday planning soon, so stay tuned for that]. And to top it all off, Mykonos being an Island also meant that it didn’t have the company, Uber, available, so traditional taxis were our next safest bet.

Within 24 hours of stepping into Mykonos, we soon realised taxis were also a no-go. Mykonos has 30 taxis on the island, not 30 taxi companies, but 30 taxi cars (yes, 30!). Left with no other choice but to rent, we hired a quad bike between us for 3 days, costing around 30 euros a day. However, driving around as we pleased, and seeing the most stunning views along the coast, turned out to be one of the many highlights of the holiday!

Moving on to the weather in Mykonos, it will come of no surprise that every single day the sun shined beautifully, with temperatures between 26 to 28 degrees Celsius. Yes, this might not seem very hot to my fellow Londoners when picking a holiday destination, but may I add that Mykonos rarely had a cloud in the sky. So that day, when my weather app showed 26 degrees, it felt more like the mid-30s!

But I must mention, one aspect of the weather I’d never considered, was just how windy it can be in Mykonos.

Mykonos Town is situated on one end of the island, overlooking the ocean. Along the sea front are a host of restaurants where you can wine and dine while watching the sea. My boyfriend and I did exactly that, picking a restaurant called En Plo that had seating outside under a canopy.

If I could only give you one tip to take away from that experience, it would be to choose your food wisely. I ordered a simple but delicious tomato-based pizza with toppings of mozzarella and rocket. Within 30 seconds of taking an obligatory picture of my food, I lost about 50% of my rocket to the wind. I’m a foodie, and a big fan of rocket on pizza, so this was heart-breaking! Lesson learnt.

And finally, this brings me nicely onto dining in Mykonos. One thing you may not have anticipated when planning your trip to Mykonos was sharing a restaurant with animals. Cats to be exact.

It was not uncommon to be sitting at the table, digging into some great food before feeling something brush against your leg. I lost count of the amount of times I felt myself jump out of my skin. Mykonos has many stray cats wandering from restaurant to restaurant in the hopes that someone will accidentally drop some food, or in some cases, purposely drop some food.

On one occasion, while sitting in a fish and chip restaurant overlooking the sea, my boyfriend saw a cat hovering around with what looked to be an infected left eye. It put him off his food completely. Whether I would have been put off myself is a whole other story when it comes to food, so we’ll save that for another day. The moral of the story is, don’t pay too close attention to the cats for the fear of wasting food and money.

But a positive to take away from the unusually high number of stray cats in Mykonos, is that there will be less rats around!

Thank you for reading! If you liked this post, please share and leave a comment below. Keep an eye out for my next post in the MYKONOS 101 series where I share on things to do in Mykonos.

Taneshia Jasmine