After over a week at sea, today we again touch dry land. Our first stop is the granite island of Mykonos – the island of light (or if you're that way inclined, party island). The name of the island is derived from the local hero Mykons. He was worshipped in antiquity and is considered to be a son or grandson of Apollo.

Our day on shore began with a short shuttle ride into town . We had considered walking into town, but opted to fork out the $10 for the shuttle. Once we saw just how much space there was for pedestrians (i.e. none) we agreed that we’d made the right decision. This was reinforced when traffic came to stand still because two passengers had stopped on a bend to take some photos and no car/bus/motorbike could get past without running them over.

Highlights of the day included getting lost in the winding, cobblestone streets of town, stumbling across Little Venice, seeing the windmills, randomly finding the Aegean Maritime Museum and eating lunch at a local establishment.

Little Venice consists of a series of houses that were built on along the shoreline. As the area is quite pretty and has sweeping views of the sea, it is both a tourist trap and photographer’s paradise. In the 16^th and 17^th century pirating was common and the area around Little Venice was used for quick loading and unloading of goods by merchants .

Mykonos’ year round winds make it a perfect place to have windmills. These structures have appeared on the island since before the 16^th century and were commonly used to refine grain. Only a couple of them remain as reminders of the Mycenaean history and as they are also quite pretty, they are also greatly photographed.

The Maritime Museum wasn’t exactly on our to do list, however as we managed to wander past it, we thought we would take a quick look. The museum is housed a in traditional 19^th century Mycenaean building and has a collection of Greek nautical artefacts – there are a couple of clay vessels that were probably used to transport grain, some anchors and various other maritime related items. There are also a couple of replicas of ships that sailed the Aegean including the Endeavour.

Lunch was at a open air Greek restaurant that looked to have a few locals in it (followed by quite a few passengers after they saw us sitting there) .  I ate too much Greek Salad and grilled Haloumi (OMG!), while Mum gorged herself on seafood. Due to the amount of food and the ambiance it took about 1.5 hours to finish eating. Had we not lunched for so long, we were considering heading back to the ship a little early to get the appropriate attire for a quick dip at a nearby beach.

We returned to the ship and instead cooled off in the pool, which I have been informed was much cooler than normal.

After a quick dinner at the buffet we tried to stay away for the Ghana vs Germany game, but failed. Again by half time we were watching for the cabin, trying to keep our eyes open long enough to work out who scored when.

On a side note, I remembered to wear my pedometer today and it told me we did an impressive 12k steps. No wonder our legs are a bit stiff.

Fun fact:
According to Greek mythology, Mykonos was where Hercules killed the giants. The large rocks scattered across the island are supposedly their corpses.