Mykonos and Naples

Having left Turkey in our wake, the next stop on the Roe Mediterranean Cruise Extravaganza was Mykonos, a little Greek island. Unfortunately, we only had a total of about half a day in Mykonos (are you detecting a theme here?), but we still got a chance to wander the island, see vacationing Greeks and a few native Mykonans, and see the delightful Greek quaintness.

Here is a beautiful little seaside church. As you can tell somewhat from the photograph, this church is incredibly tiny – I would say that it could fit a maximum of about fifteen people, and that would be rather crowded. The white walls and colored roof are very characteristic of architecture in Mykonos, and probably elsewhere in Greece as well. The buildings are apparently painted white because ants tend not to crawl on white things, and Mykonos is a major producer of ants.

Mykonos is also relatively famous for its windmills, which are several centuries old and are all aligned along the coast. They’re quite a bit different in their construction from your typical quixotic windmill, in that they have quite a bit more spokes and have removable sails (in this picture, the sails are down). You can see a little bit of the thatched roof here, as well.

Shortly before lunch, the Roe family had the honor of meeting Petros III, a local denizen. Petros’ grandfather, Petros I, was apparently discovered injured in Mykonos by locals, who took him in and nurtured him back to health back around World War II. Petros then founded a dynasty of pelicans that have had their run of the island, enjoying the choicest of scraps from the local restaurants and mating with only the most beautiful local pelicans.

After lunch, we wandered around the narrow little streets of Mykonos for a few hours before returning back to the ship and embarking for…

Naples!

OK, I’ll admit that I’m being a wee bit misleading here. The Roe family didn’t actually spend very much time at all in Naples the city. Instead, we piled onto a bus that traversed some alarmingly narrow mountain roads and, after about an hour, arrived at a beautiful little organic farm only about a mile from the sea. At one point, the bus stopped to allow photographs of the coast, as shown below:

Woefully, my camera died at this point, so I have no more photos of Naples. Here is a condensed version of what happened in Naples:

Farm = Beautiful

Sorrento = Crowded

Gelato = Delicious