Delos – The lions terrace
In the morning we walked up and started to pack at 7:00am. We went for the hot breakfast offered by the hotel and included in the room at 8:00am and we were the first in the dinning room. We called a taxi, a thing that we tried the day before with no luck, but now it worked and we left for the town with our luggage. We bought tickets for Delos for the 10am boat and for Paros for the 2:45 pm boat and we went to the ship for Delos with the luggage to see where we can drop them during our visit in the island. This is not such an easy matter, on Mykonos existing only one luggage dropping place that was closed that Sunday morning, and nobody could help us with an advice. The guys from the boats were very nice, such as Greeks usually are, and they offered to keep the luggage on the boat and move it from one boat to another if we decide to return with another boat, a thing that they did because we returned with the 1:30pm boat.
The boat ride to Delos takes 30 minutes. Delos is a unique place, a very powerful and important place of antiquity, where lavishing treasures were deposited and temples were built. A kind of Switzerland of antiquity, it was hosting the tax of the Delian federation, the name of the Cyclades coming from the circle these islands are making around Delos. The place was an important sanctuary to the god Apollo and it was a holy island where neither birth nor death could happen, the pregnant women and the dying people being evacuated as a precaution. The ruins have their romance and the entire island is full of them being extensively excavated but still being lots of places in need of more work. We visited the museum and hiked up on Kynthos Mountain, the highest peak of the island. We returned to the boat after nearly 4 hours of walking among the ruins and we continued to Mykonos where we boarded, after a longer wait caused by some delays, a FlyingCat that brought us to Paros in one hour. Hydrofoils are the new way for hopping between the islands. 17 years ago they did not exist and 8 years ago were very fast boat where you could find a spot to see the sun but they were shaking you senseless and sea sickness could happen easily on them but not on regular ferries. The new hydrofoils, the FlyingCats are very spiffy, completely sealed, moving relatively fast and having the advantage of offering a very smooth ride, comparing with the old hydrofoils. The travel time is not half but the price of the ticket is usually double than on a regular ferry. Inside you feel like in a plane and is no way to get outside, so it becomes just a way to move from one point to another and you cannot enjoy sun bathing on the deck or the sea view like on a regular ferry.
A one hour ride to Paros costs E20/person, but sometimes prices vary in ways we could not figure out. Besides it turns out to be more companies that you can find out at the booking offices, so if you are looking for a cheaper ride or for a different hour ferry, you have to check more than the regular Blue Star and Hellenic Seaways offices that are a feature in every harbor.
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