A Nice Way to Get to Mykonos

If you’re going to the island of Mykonos for a vacation or even just a weekend of stay-awake sunning, swimming and partying, and you’re getting there from somewhere on the mainland of Greece, you might want to spend as little time as possible actually travelling to your destination.

Mykonos Island National Airport has a 6,500-foot runway capable of handling jets as big as the Boeing 757 and it sees plenty of charter and scheduled flights from all over Europe, particularly in the peak summer season

Mykonos being the magnet for tourism that it is, there are various ways of getting there. The traditional one is by sea ferry from Piraeus or another port on the mainland or one of the other islands in the Cyclades, the island group that includes Mykonos.

Various ferry lines operate ships of various sizes and speeds on routes to and among the Cyclades and we don’t intend in this posting to look at how you go about taking one of these ferries other than to say that the last time we did so, many years ago, you could just walk up to the ticket office at Piraeus and buy a ticket on the day of your trip. Suffice it to say that getting to Mykonos by ferry is usually the cheapest way of getting there and is a pleasant trip of several hours on a sunny day. It certainly can put you in the right frame of mind for your relaxing stay on a Greek island.

Many ferries serve Mykonos from Piraeus (the port of Athens), other ports on the Greek mainland and other islands.

You can also get to Mykonos by booking yourself on a Mediterranean cruise. Many cruise ships call at the main port of Mykonos and if you visit Mykonos during a cruise you will certainly get the chance to visit the fascinating main town, locally known as Chora or Hora (which apparently means “the town” and is a common name for communities on Greek islands when the name of the island itself is the same as the name of the principal town).

The town of Mykonos has a fascinating history of smuggling, piracy and armed resistance going back hundreds of years and was deliberately built as a maze of alleyways that made it almost impossible for invaders to attack the place without getting dispersed and lost ― or at least without allowing the local inhabitants time to get away to safety.