SoRMuiJAi: Day 23 - The anticipated return to Mykonos

We were rudely awoken when our bedroom door was opened by the cleaner. But because of our security system, she could barely open the door more than a few inches before the door rammed into our well positioned suitcases. After she struggles for a minute, she eventually gives up and we go back to bed. Our alarms finally go off when we have a freezing cold shower before going down stairs (Yep, there was no hot water again). We don't even bother with the hotel breakfast. Instead, we go to the local bar around the corner from the hotel for a decent coffee and fresh crossiants. But to be honest, I'll be glad not to see a crossiant for the next month of my life.

We also found a post box to post the last of our drunken postcards to Cherry before we went back and started our slow and planned out mission of moving the luggage down to reception. By the time we got the luggage downstairs, we were all sweaty again. Didn't stop us taking a photo with the statue in the lobby.

Moishii bringing his last suitcase down

The bloody statue

The only reason we booked this hotel was because of this statue, and we contemplated sneaking to reception in the middle of the night to dress up the statue. Of course, we were too hot to care. We then start the slow and steady dragging of our suitcases to the bus stop through a freeway tunnel.

1/2 way through the tunnel

Just before we got to the bus stop, I stopped to pull out my laptop and other gear that I didn't want stowed away/thrown about. (I packed everything together so I only had to drag one bag). As I was doing this, Moishii was doing something to his bag when he broke the brand new padlock we bought yesterday for $1. I guess thats what you get.

We line up for the bus and shove all our luggage in the baggage compartment. As we got onto the bus, we started getting paranoid that someone will unload our suitcases, so I ended up with my face plastered against the window making sure no one was stealing our luggage. God, when did I get so paranoid? I think it was when this African looking guy walked up to Moishii and started mumbling nonsense to him. I wasn't surprised it out of the blue, the guy would jump and hump Moishii then run away. It was THAT weird.

When we finally pulled into the airport, we immediately went to look for our check-in counter. And as usual, we have no check-in counter. Infact, we weren't going to get one for awhile! We basically squatted around until they gave us a check-in counter. When we did check in, my suitcase was 25kg and I started panicking that they were going to charge me for the extra baggage. Then I noticed Moishii's bag was about 32kg! God, atleast I wasn't the worst one! hahaha Luckily we didn't get charged for any excess baggage. So once we checked everything in, we went to the nearest cafe/food court area and planted ourselves down for the next hour. This time, I was smart not to check in my book. So we did a bit of reading and a bit of recapping when we realised we were both hungry and if we didn't eat now, we wouldn't be able to eat for another 4 hours. Ok, we might be able to eat, but it would be the Athens Maccas (which we have a great history with) and it was way to early for that.

We jumped up and started roaming around the airport until we found another AutoGrill. God I'm going to miss the AutoGrill. Not only was their prices reasonable, the food was fantastic! We grabbed a sandwich each and sat down at a bench to eat. This is when I noticed one thing that explained why Italians love food. A 1.5-2y.o boy was sitting directly opposite me, munching on a ham and cheese panini. In Italy, the kids eat whatever the parents eat. None of this blended up mush that comes in a jar/can. The Italians love food, because they start eating proper Italian food from a young age. The number of kids you see now days who don't know how to eat fish/chicken off the bone is amazing. Its not their fault, its the fault of the parents who don't teach their kids. I know family friends who are 16-17, and still need their parents to take the meat off a piece of chicken for them. If they went into KFC, they'll choke to death! (My nephew learnt how to eat a fish head/bones from the age of 2).

Anyway, since we were about to leave Italy, we thought we better have one last coffee. After staring at a woman carrying her shopping in a dog cage, we took our last shot of coffee and headed towards the boarding gate. And again, we sat and waited. And waited. About 5mins from boarding, suddenly Moishii insisted that he needed to go shopping. FFS, why didn't you go 20mins ago? And the minute he left? The whole plane started boarding. Talk about timing. Geees.

We got onto the plane and said our farewells to Italy. It has been an amazing 3 weeks with plenty of excitement and plenty of coffee. God we're going to miss the coffee. But I'm definitely not missing crossiants and sandwiches!!! As the plane takes off, we take a last look at Italy and started preparing ourselves for Mykonos....

We finally land in Athens where it was a marathon hike from one side of the airport to the other side. We went through countless security checkpoints and the water that Moishii insisted on buying from Milan got confiscated in Athens. We also quickly browsed duty free to see if there was anything we can pick up on our way back. As we go through the last security checkpoint, Moishii got stopped for his Asthma machine again. I know the drill now and just take a seat as it'll take him 5mins to unpack and another 5mins to repack everything. By the time Moishii was done, we were still SO EARLY for our flight, that the flight using our gate before us hadn't even boarded yet.

When the previous flight started boarding, there was a massive rush with half the airport charging towards the gate. To save our own lives, we grabbed our bags and sat on the other side of the room. Eventually, the waiting area got full again with all the people waiting to go to Mykonos. This is our third time to Mykonos, so we knew the drill for boarding. The minute we see an Olympic airways air hostess walking towards our counter, we jumped up grabbed our bags to run towards the counter. Even then, we weren't the first in line. God the Greeks can be quick when they want to be. Next thing you know, we're herded onto a shuttle bus that takes us to our tiny little twin engine propeller plane. I can tell Moishii is starting to panic, but its ok. It'll be worth it when we get to Mykonos to get our closure.

We finally land in Mykonos where we quickly grab our bags and we're met by a guy holding my name on a sign. 2 Years ago, I won a photo competition that scored us free accomodation in Mykonos so we finally came to claim our prize. The prize was 3 nights free accomodation, but we negotiated and got a discount when we extended the stay to 6 nights.

We hop into the van and off we went screeching through the windy roads of Mykonos. Suddenly all the memories from 2004 and 2005 comes flooding back. God I can't believe we're back in Mykonos. OMG WE ARE BACK IN MYKONOS!!! WTF WERE WE THINKING??? As the realisation hit us, the van stops and out we get. God, its the Mykonos windmills! The driver opens the back of the van and immediately grabbed Moishii's hand luggage and started running off. So we grab our MASSIVE suitcases and follow him, dragging and tripping our way through the narrow and uneven streets of Mykonos. After a few twists and turns, I finally realised why he was so eager to grab Moishii's bag. Our apartment was on the top floor of these horrible steep stair cases! And to make things worse, the handrails were broken. If I leaned on it too hard, they would snap in half and I'll fall to my death. The bastard didn't even help me with my bags! He so wasn't getting a tip from us!!

When I finally made it up the stairs, we were quite happy with the room. There was more than a 30cm gap between the beds, we had air conditioning, a kitchen and fridge, a decent toilet/shower with ventilation AND a mini balcony! Beats the shithole of a room we stayed in last time......Once we settled in, we dumped our stuff and grabbed a nice CONSISTENTLY HOT shower. I finally got to do all my laundry and put them out to dry in the hot sun. I also cranked the air con to "freezing" to make up for the 48degree heat we suffered the past few days. And what better way to ease ourselfs into the Mykonos lifestyle than to crash into bed for a nap.

After a quick nap, we got up and got ready for our first night out in Mykonos. OK, deep breath. We're ready for this. Its been 2 years and we should've known that this moment will come eventually.

Walking through the streets of Mykonos just brought back memory after memory. The both of us strolled and pointed and laughed about old times. God, Mykonos has been such a huge part of lives its unbelievable! We started stalking the regulars of Mykonos when we suddenly bumped into the crazy hat woman. Next thing you know, I've forked out for a brand new pair of sunnies. It was night time, but hey, you never know when you need sunnies!

And then we went running to the $40 woman's shop only to find out she's shut down and another store has opened in her place!! OMG!!! NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is devastating for us!!! We're going to have to come up with a plan to track her down. I can tell you this really really put a dampener on us :(

Since our last trip, we've both been craving a baked lamb and pasta dish we had, so for dinner on our first night, that's exactly where we went:

Our Greek Salad

Mixed and ready to eat

Hitting the bottle before our main meal

Oven baked lamb with pasta

A strong Greek coffee to get us going

By the end of dinner, we were sloshed. God it feels good to be back. We stumbled back to the room for a quick rest before we headed out to club for the night. It was still early (11pm) so we laid in bed and watched a bit of tv to wait for the room to stop spinning. We turned on the tv and suddenly there was 2 brides dancing and singing on tv. Except these were the brides of frankenstein. It looks like we had stumbled upon the greek show Je t'aime. We didn't exactly understand what was going on except really really old people making a fool of themselves by prancing about half naked. God, this was too much to take.

We decided to hit the streets again and ended up at our regular joint, the scandanavian bar. I'm not going to bother going into detail about what happened except there was a slutty green top girl that humped and sucked every guy she met.

The club starts getting HOT!

and to make our Mykonos trip memorable.....

Me and Johnny

That's right. He's backkkkkkkk! My summer flight, Johnny. The minute he saw me, he recognised me and practically shoved his way through the crowd. What happened next is up to your imagination. Lets just say the evening ended up with me getting my closure, alcohol, and pita rolls. Oh, and a very abusive phone call to Christine.