Our grand plan was to do the Mykonos – Santorini – Crete route on our own, instead of being ferried around on a cruise ship. We did some checking, and figured we can try doing this by the regular ferries which ply the waters. After checking some of the ferry timings the night before, we decided to try and catch the first ferry.
We woke up at around 6 am, headed straight for the metro, and got to Piraeus at around 7.20 am. After asking around for a bit, we managed to get a ferry ticket (~12 EUR) on one of those large cruise ships leaving at 7.30 am. Hustling, we somehow managed to get on the boat just before it left. Everything really worked like clockwork for us! Well, at least for this part of the journey.
Here’s where things get interesting. Because everything is in Greek, and both of us are like super groggy from the lack of sleep (and lack of seat on the boat), when we heard the guy on the PA announce xxxx-ynos, we thought we were in Mykonos. Having never been to Greece, nor Mykonos, we evidently don’t know how Mykonos looks like, and seeing the number of tourists line up for disembarkation, we hopped off the cruise ship with them. Guess where we ended up? Tinos.
In retrospect, I guess it sort of worked out for us. According to guides and other travelers, Mykonos is sort of a party town, and since both of us aren’t really big party animals, spending the night in Tinos isn’t exactly the worst thing on earth. At the pier, we were met by a bunch of guys who wanted to fill their guesthouses for the night. Based on the pictures and prices, we ended choosing a place called Lucas Rooms (~30 EUR for a double, ensuite), which was about 10 min walk from the waterfront strip. It was a pretty little place, and very comfortable. I highly recommend it.
Well, this was not part of the plan, so we had to come up with a new plan. We just sorta walked around. Apparently, Tinos is a quite a popular site for domestic tourism. In particular, Greeks like to head to the northern part of the island. I can’t quite remember why now. We were in the southern part, so we ended up going to a church there, which is also an important tourist destination. Greeks like to go there as part of religious tourism, and bring home the holy water from the Church of Holy Mary. There was quite an array of religious paraphernalia on the way leading up to the church. In particular, there were candles of all manner.
In the afternoon, I also fulfilled one of my other dreams – take a dip in the Mediterranean. The water was kinda chilly, but once I got my metabolism up, all was good. We then bought our onward ticket from Tinos to Mykonos at one of the local ferry offices available at the waterfront. It was a pretty chilled out day.
Lucas rooms
Mediterranean Sea
Church of Holy Mary
Candles for sale
Wanderlust 