Mykonos & Delos

We docked at the Greek island of Mykonos, a relatively unknown island for vacation destination until Jackie O went there.  She fell in love with it and invited many of her celebrity friends to join her in vacationing there.  The water really is a deep blue and so is the sky.  It is exactly what you picture in your mind that a Greek island would look like, complete with whitewashed houses on the hillside,

lovely blue and red domed churches,

narrow streets which help the air flow and cools things off better,

and windmills.

Len and Cheryl Hammer from Baltimore, who we had met on two walking tours in Odessa, joined us in our Mark-led excursion to the island of Delos via a ferry.  Mykonos and Delos are part of a group of islands called The Cyclades which are arranged in a very rough circle.  Delos is the center of the circle and is very small, a little more than one square mile.  It lacks any water sources, but over 2,000 years ago it was the religious and commercial hub of Greece, in part because it was believed to be the birthplace of Apollo and because Zeus anchored it, making it much less earthquake prone than the rest of Greece.  No one lives on the island today, but one can see the remnants of large marketplaces,

tile floors,

temples,

a boulevard lined with lions,

columns,

an amphitheater,

Underground tunnels for the amphitheater

and homes.

There is no water supply on Delos, so there are many large cisterns

where they collected rain water.  We saw remnants of underground conduits that transported water to and from the houses.

There is one mountain on Delos, which we climbed

and had a beautiful view of all of the ruins

and a nice view of Mykonos.

What a treat to be here!