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How do you spend your time during the day in Mykonos? |
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I sleep late, eat breakfast, take the car to the beach in the afternoon, go for a swim, and at night, I stop back at the hotel for a shower and head into town. |
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Do you do any shopping in town? I read about the accessory shop that showed up in your novel about Mykonos.
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▲Mykonos Town has lots of accessory shops. |
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Yes, of course I shop. There’s nothing else to do, and I can’t just eat the whole time. |
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What kind of things do you buy? |
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Hmm, I’m not sure. All kinds of things. Beaded accessories, for one. Oh, and there’s a shop there that’s beyond words. They sell accessories with plain old rocks from local beaches, but they've polished and coupled them together with gold and silver. The guy running it is gay, and his sense of fashion is impeccable. I always go back there. |
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Cool! |
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And there’s a sponge shop. |
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Oh yeah, the sponges. Natural sponges from the sea. |
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There are a ton of sponges all piled up inside this tiny shop, and the man who runs it is constantly spraying them all with water so they don’t dry out. The last time I went there, the shop wasn’t there anymore, so I’m not sure if he moved or closed down. But that was the first time I’d ever seen anything like it, all those fluffy sponges piled up all the way to the ceiling. Every single sponge had a different price, so I wonder what the value was based on.
▲A sponge shop, with sponges piled all the way to the ceiling. |
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I hear they risk their lives gathering those. |
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Huh? |
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There’s an island in the east end of the Aegean Sea called Kalymnos that’s famous for high-quality sponges. The divers who catch the sponges have to swim to incredible depths below the surface, so they’re at risk for decompression sickness and accidents underwater. Apparently a lot of them have died. |
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Wow, I didn’t know that. I’ll have to treat them carefully. I hadn’t been giving them much thought when I use them, but I’ll treat them well. What do they look like underwater? |
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The sponge is an invertebrate animal that’s part of the sponge phylum, and they just kind of lump up around the ocean floor. |
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Ah, a lump. The ones for sale were cut up and bleached one time. |
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Right. Yellow ones are bleached, and brown ones are unbleached. |
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I wonder if that has anything to do with the price. |
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Yeah. That and the density, apparently. The big ones with smaller holes are the good ones, I hear. |
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Interesting. I saw one the other day in Japan that was really small and selling for a thousand yen, but compared to that, the ones in Greece are enormous. |
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They are pretty big. It’s a pretty major souvenir of the Aegean Sea. |
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The man at that sponge shop was calling out to shoppers in the street. |
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What else did you do besides shopping? |
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I took walks, and watched the sun set. Everyone’s got a spot they go to watch the sun set. I can’t remember what mine was called. |
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Little Venice, maybe? Where those Venetian-style buildings are all lined up along the sea.
▲Little Venice, and its buildings lining the coastline. |
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Yeah, that’s it! I’d go there, and well, any harbor would have been fine—I just wanted to watch the sun set with everyone. So everyone would watch it, and when the sun was down, they’d be like, “Well, the sun’s down, let’s head out,” and leave. I was impressed at how sunset-watching in Mykonos was surprisingly... not peaceful. (laughs) The waves were pretty choppy, and everyone was chatting and noisy. |
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People eat pretty close to where the waves break.
▲Tables right up against the edge of where the waves break. |
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Yeah. Some people were even getting wet. (laughs) That’s one of the nice things about that place. How laid-back it is. If anyone invited me to do the same thing in Capri or Sardegna in Italy, I wouldn’t do it. |
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You wouldn’t watch the sun set like that? |
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Well, I’m sure there are people watching it, but in Capri, for instance, people are more snobby. Capri is mostly sharp cliffs, so there are barely any beaches, but if they were to watch the sun set, they’d probably do it from a rooftop bar. People in Capri change into really fancy clothes at night and go out to party. That, or tourists. It’s one or the other. |
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So, for example, if I were to go out to eat some good food in Capri... |
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You’d dress up in a ridiculously nice outfit, and if it’s not a famous brand, they won’t let you in. |
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Oh my god! So it’s not just off-limits if I’m wearing sandals. |
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You wouldn’t make it anywhere in those. |
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Capri is scary! |
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I agree, it scares me , too. (laughs) Capri was a little too deep for me. |
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But in Mykonos, you can wear sandals, and whatever you want, and no one minds. |
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Exactly. I loved that. |
