I Traveled to Mykonos Greece, Alone
From Oct 9-14 of this year, I went to Mykonos, Greece. I went alone, but that was not the original idea. I had planned to go with my boyfriend; however, he was unable to go, so I asked my friend to go with me, but again, things didn’t work out. The airline that I had bought my tickets from didn’t allow you to change the passenger on the ticket for international travel. So a piece of advice from me to you: don’t pre-buy a plane ticket for anyone. You never know what’s going to happen, and always read the fine print; otherwise, you’ll be like me—an idiot who then had to go to a foreign country alone. This was also my first time traveling outside of the country. It was nerve-racking.
Before I knew it, it was time to go to the airport. My boyfriend dropped me off at the airport. This was also my first time flying by myself. Walking into the airport at 3am was very weird. There was almost no one there yet, so I sat watching YouTube on my phone for an hour until security opened at 4am. Getting through security wasn’t that hard, and it didn't take that long. I was prepared for it to take forever because that's what movies and shows had always shown.
Before going into security, I overheard a couple talking about how they were going to Chicago, which is where my first flight was landing, so I thought to myself, “I found adults,” and I tried to sneakily follow them to the gate to make sure I could find it. I was super nervous about missing the plane. I followed them to the gate, sat down and got comfortable to wait for the plane when I got a notification that the gate was changed. I was thankful that American Airlines did that; otherwise, I probably would have gotten lost and missed my flight, but thankfully I didn’t. An hour later, we boarded the plane.
The flight was only two hours long and uneventful. I slept the whole time. We landed in Chicago. The Chicago Airport had so many food options, so I had to get McDonald’s. Getting to the gate was really easy; it was an uneventful boarding. The plane was nice, and the flight attendants were nice. Since it was an eight-hour flight to London, they served us drinks, dinner and a snack, and there were screens to watch shows and movies. As this was my first time flying, I didn’t know that we would get screens, so I had pre-downloaded movies and shows on Netflix to watch. I'm glad I did because I finally got caught up with Riverdale, and it awakened an obsession with it. The only complaint I have about the flight is that the flight attendants seemed to forget about me a lot because I was in a row alone. This turned out to be a theme for this trip.
We landed in London. The Heathrow Airport felt like another world. We landed in terminal two. My layover was overnight, but I was beyond paranoid and nervous about missing my flight, so I made my way to terminal four. Imagine my shock when I found out that I had to take an underground train from terminal two to get to terminal four. The tickets were free, thankfully. Once I was in terminal four, I had to go up two levels and settle in and wait until the next morning for security to open. I made it through security no problem. The funny thing is, European security is better than American security. Then I found out that to get to my gate, I had to take another train to another part of the building and then go up three levels. I was the first one there. Two hours later, I was boarding the plane ride. A full day of travel with all the time changes was finally done, and my Greek getaway was beginning.
It didn’t get off to a great start. Leaving the airport was painless. All I needed was a stamp on my passport. Stepping out of the airport, it was bright, sunny and hot but not humid. Mykonos doesn't have Uber or Lyft, so I started to look for a cab. There was a bus, but I wasn't sure how much it was or where exactly it would take me.
There was a group of guys standing near cars that were parked on the median right outside of the airport; they were cab drivers. I got a ride with one of them. It was weird. First, he wasn’t familiar with the address I gave him; second, it was a $15 ride for only like 5 minutes in the car, and it didn’t even get me to the exact place that I was trying to go. He stopped right in the middle of a big shopping center and told me that my hotel was down the road. It wasn’t.
Being in a strange place with no idea where to go, I pulled up my GPS and started to follow it. That didn’t work. It kept telling me that I had to turn left but there was no way to turn left because there was a wall where it was telling me to turn. I walked around in circles for at least 30 minutes, I was super scared of missing my check-in time at my hotel and just being completely lost in a strange place. Finally, I got up the courage to ask someone for directions. The first two people I asked had no idea, but the third person I asked saved the day. He gave me directions and told me to go down the street to my right, past the basketball court and up the stairs, then turn right, and go down the street to my hotel. The Martina would be right there. It was! I was so happy to finally be where I was supposed to be.
This leads me to the second issue of the first day. I booked an Airbnb, but I guess I didn’t read the info on it very closely because I wasn’t aware that it was a hotel that had advertised a single room on Airbnb. I went into it expecting to meet a private person outside on the Martina to show me to the apartment that I had rented. Instead, I waited outside for 30 minutes, tried to message and call the host on Airbnb before finally going into the lobby of the Martina to try and get a room since I thought that the room I had rented wasn’t going to work out. The owner asked me if I was Sara. Surprised, I said yes. She then nagged me for the next 30 minutes about how it was normal for hotels to put up rooms on Airbnb and how she couldn’t believe that I was only visiting Mykonos and nowhere else.
To her credit, she did a great job of explaining the history of the island and making sure that I knew where the bus stops were and how to get to the main square for food and shopping. She then took me up to my room and left me to settle in. It was a nice room, small but nice. I set my bags down and lay down to take a nap. Jet lag is real, and it hit me like a truck. I woke up a couple hours later. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since the plane.
The hotel manager had told me that Mykonos was built to be a maze, and that it's perfectly normal to get lost. I really didn’t want to get lost, especially at night, so I only walked in a straight line in the hopes of avoiding getting lost. I walked down the streets until I got to the shore line. The waterfront was lined with restaurants. I went to the first one that I saw. I don't remember what it was called. I remember what I got though; I had chicken breast, potatoes and a salad. It was very good. The service in Greece is very different than in America. The server never checked on me or came to get the money, so I just left money on the table when I was done and walked away. The tax is already included in the price listed on the menu and tags.
I walked back to my hotel. I did get a little lost and was able to find my way back. I watched some Netflix on my phone and went to sleep. The next day, I got up and decided to explore the island. I went to a restaurant called Yummy for lunch. I got a chicken sandwich and fries. It was remarkably good. I went to Yummy multiple times while I was there. It was the best food and also cheap.
I walked around the island that day and got lost a couple of times. First, I went down the same way that I had the night before and went to the waterfront again. Another thing that was a shock to see was that the restaurants lined on the waterfront had a host or just an employee who was always standing at the front. As I was walking by admiring the view and walking around, every single employee from every restaurant stopped me and tried to get me to sit down and eat.
I'm already an anxious person who doesn't like talking to strangers, so having all those people come up to me, all within a 15-minute walk, was very anxiety-inducing to me. It also made picking a restaurant to eat very hard. I felt like if someone talked to me about eating at their restaurant, I was being rude by not eating there.
Once I passed all the restaurants, I explored the small church and walked down the marina. From there, I walked in the opposite direction. I went into a store where I bought all the shirts that I brought back for my friends and boyfriend. I walked further down to a small beachfront, where I sat for a while and soaked in the sun and put my foot in the ocean. I did some more walking around before eating dinner and going back to my hotel.
In all honesty, I was kind of disappointed with my day. It didn’t feel full or fun enough. I didn’t feel like I did enough. I almost felt like it had been a waste of a day, so when I got back to my hotel room, I went on Trip Advisor and looked up some activities I could do. I booked a scuba diving trip and a tour of an ancient abandoned island named Delos.
The tour was for the next day. I went to sleep feeling excited for the next day. I love history and ancient Greece, so I was double excited. I was to meet my tour guide early that morning, so early in fact that when I was walking down the street to get to the port, none of the shops were open. Usually by the time I was up and walking down the streets, every street was filled with storefronts and display cases.
I was told to meet my tour guide at the church that I was exposed to the day before. I found my guide waiting for me with a sign that had my name on it. I had read some reviews on this tour that said the tour itself was amazing but that the museum was an extra cost that your guide would ask for and that the museum itself was kind of a bore.
Even though I knew that, when the guide (I forgot her name) asked me for the extra $12 for the museum, I just gave her the money. I don't want to go through having to say no and her telling me it was an important part. She gave me stickers that would identify me and others as part of her group, so that we knew who was with us if we got lost. We had to wait about 20 minutes with our group for the boat to get into port.
It was a huge boat with two levels. I got a seat on the second level on a couch that was against the wall. I was seated across from a couple who had the same sticker as me. I again decided that they were the adults I was going to follow. The ride to Delos was only 15 minutes. On the ship there was a concession stand where you could buy drinks and food.
The guide had told us that when we reached the island, she would go on ahead to buy the tickets for the museum. For a couple minutes, I couldn't find her and was starting to worry that I had already gotten lost, but I found her against the fence trying to get our attention. She did a head count, and we were all there. She began the tour by pointing out the bronze male statue that we had passed on the way to the fence.
She told us that it was a collaboration between the government of Greece and an art school to place modern art among the ruins. The male sculptures were really interesting; a couple were placed in the ocean, and you could see them from all angles of the island. The other art pieces were placed sporadically in the ruins of the storefronts and houses. They were block sculptures. I can recognize that they are art and that some people would enjoy them. However, I didn't think it really fit with the look of the ruins like the male sculptures did.
The guide walked us through the ruins telling us which were houses and which were stores, about how their economy worked and what ultimately led to the island being abandoned. The end of the tour was the museum; the guide told us to go view the museum and that the boat was going to be leaving in 20 minutes and to follow the path back to the port. I walked through the museum. It was small, but it did have some interesting exhibits. The boat trip back was uneventful. When we got back to Mykonos, I stopped for lunch at one of the waterfront restaurants that I hadn’t been to yet.
From the restaurant, I went back to my hotel room to grab a sweater; it was kinda windy. It was still early afternoon, so there was much of the day left. I again went to the small beachfront and laid out, then I walked around the island, this time to the complete other side. I went to the grocery store and bought some snacks and soda. The food was pretty cheap, but it was kind of hard for me to understand the price tags.
I called my best friend a lot on this trip, not only to check in but also to get some socialisation. I was alone but I'm also not very social with people that I don't know. So I didn't go out of my way to talk to people or to go out drinking. There was only one bar, and it didn't open until after 5pm. I was wary of going out to drink alone in a foreign place, so I didn't. This made me lonely and kinda bored on my first European vacation. Calling my friend helped with that even though it didn't make the trip more interesting. I ate dinner at Yummy, and then went to sleep.
The next day, I had a scuba diving trip. It wasn’t until the afternoon, but that day was super, super windy. It felt like it was going to knock me over. To get to the scuba diving school, I had to take the bus to Paradise Beach. There were clearly labeled bus times, and the bus was labeled with where each bus went, but I was still nervous about missing it or getting lost.
The bus ride was quiet. There was only one other person on the bus. When we got to the bus stop, I followed the signs to the beach. I got a little lost. The beach was formatted where there were little condos and a whole strip of restaurants right on the beachfront. When I got to the oceanfront, I couldn’t find the scuba driving school to save my life. I walked up and down that strip 5 times trying to find it. I kept seeing this sign that said to go a certain way, but when I went that way, I hit a dead end. Eventually, I worked up the courage to ask an employee from one of the restaurants for directions. Turns out it was right in front of my face. It was behind the gates. I had thought that the gates meant I couldn't go any farther.
Thankfully, I left early, so even though it took me a while to find the school, I wasn't late; in fact I was still early. When I got there, the instructor had me sign a waiver that said if I got hurt, I wouldn't hold them responsible. Then a family of three walked in; their son had signed up to go on a drive. I was confused at first. I thought it was only scuba diving today, then I figured that they scheduled all scuba trips with a diving trip to maximize time and boat space.
The mother decided to join me on my scuba diving trip; if she hadn’t, I would have been the lone person scuba diving, which would have made me very uncomfortable. The instructor asked us our shoe size and had us try on fins to make sure they fit. She also had us try out masks to make sure that we sealed it correctly and knew how to breathe in it.
Then we picked out our wetsuits, put them on, left our belongings in the school and started the walk to the beach. The boat was anchored down a couple feet from the beach, so we had to walk out to the boat and climb up. The water was freezing. The instructor got the boast set up, and we set off to our destination. It was about a 10-minute ride to the destination that was picked from our trip. Keep in mind that it was still crazy windy.
Now, I've never really liked aquariums; I find them to be boring. I was hoping that I would like seeing marine life up close and personal more than I did behind glass. Spoiler, I didn't. We had an hour in the water to explore. The instructor had gone down with the boy; she told us to make sure we could always see the boat and if we got caught in something or we needed help, to make some noise and the boat driver, Alos, an experienced diver would come out to help us.
The water was still freezing. I only kind of got used to it. Seeing the fish and rocks was cool for the first 10 minutes, but then I was just bored. I was glad when our time was up. I climbed back up on the boat, and we returned to shore. As we were getting changed, the family asked me where I was from. They were Germany. I told them I was American. They were shocked. I remember they asked me why I had traveled so far when the US is so big and there are so many places to go in it. I told them something along the lines of, I wanted to see something beyond my country and I love Europe. After this conversation, we parted ways.
I went back toward the beachfront to grab some food. I again stopped at the first restaurant whose employee literally flagged me down. I had a turkey club instead of the usual chicken club that I had been getting from Yummy’s. The chicken club was better, but I enjoyed my lunch. After I was done eating, I decided to stay and enjoy the beach. Paradise Beach had three rows of beach chairs that they rented out for a whopping $100 per day. I was not willing to spend that, so I laid my towel out on the sand and tried to get some sun.
It was still windy, making it not that warm, but I still wanted to try and get in the water. I love swimming and I at least had to try. I tried multiple times, but I could never get past the water being at my stomach; it was just too cold. I instead walked the length of the beach at knee level water, to at least feel like I was in the water. While I was there, I also got a smoothie. It was huge and expensive, but it was made completely fresh. I watched the employee cut the fresh fruit and blend them together. I was always impressed by the quality of the food in Mykonos.
After a couple of hours at the beach, I packed up my things and went back to the bus stop. The bus dropped me off at the square where I first was dropped by that cab. I went back to my hotel room and changed out of my swimsuit. Once I was changed, I went back out to Yummy to eat dinner. I tried something different that time. It was okay, and then I went down to the waterfront to get some sorbet. This was my last day in Mykonos. I walked around again. I wanted to find a painting of the island to hang on my wall when I got home. I couldn't find one.
The next morning, I got up early. The bus was leaving for the airport around 12, and my plane was for around 2. I cleaned up my room and threw away any leftovers from the snacks I had bought. I went down to the office to check out and return my key. It was a different employee who checked me out, I didn't have to interact with the first one who was rude to me. I had prepaid on the Airbnb side, so I thought that all I had to do was check out, but the lady told me that I had to pay a stay tax or something. It was only $2, but it caught me off guard.
From there, I went to Yummy for breakfast. I again didn’t like it very much, but Yummy was still my favorite restaurant. I only had twenty dollars left in converted money, so I left all of it for the waitress and made my way up to the bus stop to wait for the bus. There were so many people out that day. There were huge groups of people coming off buses and waiting for busses. It seemed I was leaving right when the party was getting there.
The bus was packed; the ride to the airport was only 10 minutes. I was the only person who got off at the airport. I was early, as always. I had 30 minutes before their security opened. The security was easy and uneventful. I was unable to check in online, so as soon as the counter was open, I got to go check in. That was eventful.
At first, the lady couldn’t find my ticket. When she found it, there was something wrong with them, something about them being sold incorrectly. She was able to fix it, but it took 20 minutes to fix, and I had to stay at the counter while she fixed it and asked another employee to help. I was very scared for a second. I seriously thought I might be stuck in Greece.
She did manage to fix it. After another hour of waiting, I boarded the plane. It was only a 4-hour flight to the Heathrow Airport. When I landed, I bought some food and rushed to my connecting flight; it was a flight to Dublin. The Dublin flight was only 2 hours long. In Dublin, I had an overnight layover. I found a booth and settled for a small nap.
In the morning, I went through Dublin security. Again their security was better than ours. Once I got through security, I tried to find my gate. I was confused because my ticket didn’t list an actual gate number. Instead, I was to go to pre-check security for re-entrance to the US. That didn’t open till 7, so I did some waiting. All there is to do at airports is wait.
The precheck was downstairs, where there was a sign that told me that as soon as I passed through the doors to the precheck, it was considered American soil. From there, I had to go through security again, then through customs where I had to declare where I was coming from and if I was bringing back any food or plants. All that passed with no issues. I walked to the gates; since I didn't have a gate number, I had to look for my destination on all the screens.
Thankfully, my gate was the second gate that I saw. Another hour of waiting before I boarded the plane. This flight was 6 hours. It was a calm ride; I slept and watched movies. I landed in Charlotte. I was home again, and my Greece vacation was over. I enjoyed it and am so grateful that I was able to go and start to explore the world. It did, however, make me face how my anxiety really affects me and how it limits my experience. It's something I really need and have been trying to work on. Next time I travel anywhere, whether it's alone or with someone, I will try valiantly to come out of my comfort zone and have some positive experiences.
