Well, today, as promised, dawns cloudy and overcast. The forecast is for rain most of the day, on and off, which makes us in less of a hurry to get off since we really have nothing planned but a couple of museum visits and generally hanging around.

We have our room service coffee and croissants, hit the gym for our morning ritual, then ready to leave the ship around 9am.  First though, we report to GR to talk to sweet Kristine (our own personal guest relations person) who has been so diligent with trying to get Ed checked in for the B2B.  She has been trying to do it on the NCL system every day, has her managers trying to help, all to no avail.  But…success today!  We finally got his health and safety step done, after we changed his email back to his normal AOL email (the stupid PCR testing company, Eurofinns, wouldn’t let us log in with that email because we’d used it for Azamara, it kept erroring out, even though the gals on Azamara with Eurofinns said we could use that same code for NCL, so anyway, we had to use another email address, then that conflicted with NCL records….sigh).  Now though, Kristine was able to print out all our docs.  Hooray!  Now we can do the French health forms – which was the only reason we even cared about getting checked in for the b2b.  So, all handled, paper work printed, we head out into the blustery morning.

We had actually planned to walk into town – it is only about 30 minutes, but the weather and the fact that we’ve done it before and remember the treacherous walking conditions (on the main road – which is barely wide enough for one car, let alone 2 and pedestrians) disabuses us of the idea.  Plus, there are shuttle buses available – and while NCL says there is no guarantee of the number of buses, once outside, there are tons, and the local coordinator tells us a bus will leave every 10 minutes from the drop off point.  All right then!  We are set.

The bus pulls out fairly quickly, and we are on our way into town.  We are dropped at the bus station, which is where we figured we’d be, and it is an easy walk from there to the Archeology museum – the first stop on our list. 

Oh, and did I mention it is raining now?  Hadn’t really rained a drop all morning, but now?  That we are walking along the harbor?  It’s raining – just a light sprinkle, but still rain..  And wind. Gusty wind that turns the umbrella upside down.  So the museum comes in handy as our first stop to get out of the rain for a bit.

The museum turns out to be a little gem – only 2 Euro entry fee and tons and tons of amazing artifacts found around the island and on Delos, dating back to centuries BC.  The pots and vessels and jewelry are just incredible – and the fact that they found so many intact – or at least almost fully so – fascinates us. I love the jewelry and the little teeny tiny carved figurines that are put into the tombs (in this particular case, the tomb of a teenage girl) – and the pottery isn’t anything to sneer at either. 

In addition to the small relics under glass inside, there are large marble carvings outside as well, and we avail ourselves of the covered walkway to examine them and take pictures of the windmill up on the hill above the museum.  We meandered through the rooms of displays for as long as we could, before finally venturing out into the rain and wind outside – on our way into Mykonos town proper.

It didn’t take us very long to get wet and blown, so we dove into the first café we found – Mosaics Caffe – where the owner/manager/whatever he was gave us the huckster hustle – and we decided, what the heck?  It’s warm (there are heaters), it’s dry (there are plastic walls) and there is coffee. We’re in.  Turned out to be a great decision as the skies opened up while we were sitting enjoying our cappuccino and listening to the conversations around us.  Mosaics may be an overpriced café right on the water, but it is also a sort of local hub – with 3 old Greek guys who showed up and kept the owner/manager/whatever guy laughing and talking the entire time we were there.  One guy even turned to us and introduced us to the fine men sitting at the table who were great friends of his he hadn’t seen for a long time.  Very sweet.

And, continuing French Health forms saga?  As we sit there in the warmth with good wifi, I decide to go ahead and complete the French forms – but it won’t let me!  What?  It says the forms are dormant and will be deleted soon. The only option I have is to delay the deletion.  Hmmm…..no matter what I do, I can’t get the website to do anything.  The forms were stopped on October 29^th.  I try to start a new form.  No go. I try to create another ID. No go.  Finally I go back to the NCL letter with the link to the French website and lo and behold, we don’t even need the f’ing forms anymore!  All that angst for nothing.  Sheesh.  We’re not telling Kristine – no way, no how.  She worked too hard on this for us to be crushed by the unnecessity of it all.  At least that’s the way I’m rationalizing it.  Well, at least that’s one thing we don’t have to do….

Now it is time for us to once again brave the elements, so off we trundled into the rain – but with less wind – and into the winding alley way streets typical of Mykonos.  It may be raining, but it is hard to tell back here with the overhanging buildings and little awnings – but it has obviously been raining hard (as we knew) because the streets are awash in water.  All the alleyways are angled down from each side to the middle to form a sort of gulley – that today was rushing with about an inch or so of water.  We carefully navigated our way through the maze – on either side of the deluge – to end up at the Maritime Museum without too much effort.  Soggy – but nonetheless – fairly effortless.

Alas, the museum is closed for the season.  After standing under the awning out front for a while – well after the 10:30a opening time, we called and they confirmed they closed on October 31 until April.  Oh well..  Next stop – the wood fired bakery in one of the oldest buildings in town.  Sigh.  Closed as well.  Ok.  That’s the end of our list.  The other museums we want to visit don’t open until 6:30p – when we will be sailing away toward our next port. Which means at 10:45a we are essentially done with Mykonos.  And while it isn’t raining at the moment, it is still wet, damp and windy as all – not a beautiful day to just wander around what would be picturesque alleyways.

Reversing course, we make our way back to the harbor, getting side tracked by the windmills and then Little Venice and then the iconic Paraportiani Orthodox Church perched on the rocks at the edge of the old town. Ok – we’re now officially done.

Completely uncharacteristic for us, we decide to call it a day and head back to the ship.  We’ll be here again in June, and then we have a car booked, so there will be lots of time to explore in hopefully better weather.  But, true to Stevens form, as we round the harbor, we decide to stop for a drink – and then a little snack – at another overpriced restaurant (much more touristic than local) on the way.

It’s warm (there are heaters), it’s dry (there are plastic walls) and there is beer and wine!  Oh, and yummy little fried zucchini sticks that look like French fries but taste much better.  With Tzatziki.  Perfect!  And bonus (well sort of), we get a pet at not charge.  Seriously now, we’re just hanging out, enjoying our little snack, and suddenly I feel something behind me, and lo and behold, Miss Kitty shows up!  And she likes us – so much so she makes a home in my rain jacket, and shows her major displeasure when I stop petting her.  So then she just moves over to Ed!  Who really isn’t into cats at all, but apparently Miss Kitty doesn’t care. And really, Ed is just a push over with animals!

Snack and pet time over, we finally make our way back to the shuttle…under beautiful sunny skies! Of course!  It is still really windy (it will be a bumpy ride out of here tonight), and we don’t regret our decision.  It is nice to take advantage of a relatively empty ship, plus, it gives me time to get caught up here!

So, we settle in for an afternoon and evening of relaxing and hanging out – ready for what we hope is not another rainy day in Rhodes tomorrow.