Greece: Ano Mera on Mykonos

[riontel]

We had three days scheduled in Mykonos, one to explore Mykonos Town, one for a trip to Delos and the third day... wait, asked we after returning from Delos, what are we going to do on the third day!? Luckily, our guide had just the place for us.



Ano Mera is a village about 9km inland from Mykonos Town and the second largest settlement on the island. Of the interest in the village, according to the guide, was the XVI century Panaghia Tourliani church with icons painted by some Italians and impressive architecture.

I'll get to the church in a bit, but first we had to make our way to Ano Mera. Legend has it there is a bus on the island that goes to the village. And back. We had trouble locating the bus stop where the route to Ano Mera starts, so we grabbed a taxi, expecting to come back on the bus. Taxi dropped us off at an empty square in the village and promptly disappeared while we headed out to do our touristy bit.

The Panaghia Tourliani is indeed quite pretty from the outside and has an interesting belltower, decorated with stylized thematic reliefs.



Inside is the usual hodge-podge of the orthodox church, with gaudy decor and icons, which one of the worshipers was going around kissing, completely grossing me out in the process.



After thoroughly exploring the church, carefully studying each icon and decor detail, we emerged back into the town square 15 minutes later and found ourselves all touristed out, with no productive site seeing readily available. Supposedly there was a 12th century monastery out there somewhere along with the ruins of some castle, but we neither new where they were nor had any means of getting there. So we took a stroll through the village. 10 minutes later we were back to the square pondering the same problem: now what? So we ventured outside the village.



On the outskirts of the village we stumbled upon a cemetery. It was just a traditional Greek cemetery which was keeping to the general island architecture approach, all whitewashed and curvy. It was not ancient, not ruined, but recent and functioning, yet quaint and peaceful.



They have a tradition of placing an object that would convey the idea of what the person buried might have been about, such as a picture of a boat for a fisherman or a bike for, supposedly, an avid biker.

Finally, after a quick lunch at one of the restaurants surrounding the central village square, we were absolutely, completely and unequivocally done with Ano Mera. We were past ready to leave. So we tried. Bus stop was fairly easy to locate, it even had a shelter with a bench to mark it.



It did not, however, have a schedule posted. That's ok, optimistically shrugged we, the bus probably runs every half hour. Half an hour later, we adjusted that estimate to "every hour, perhaps". Wrong again. Don't think that we were being cheap and trying to save on the taxi fair at that point. Despite the presence of a taxi stand, there were no taxis to be had either. After about an hour and a half of fruitless waiting I went out on the road and stood there beseechingly looking at the passing vehicles. It worked! I've never hitchhiked before so it must have been a beginner's luck, but one guy took pity on us, stopped and gave us a lift back to the town, for free.

To compensate for the day's disappointments luck offered us one of the best dinners of the trip in a small randomly picked restaurant. And the next day we left for Paros and new adventures.