Day 9: This Party Lifestyle is Not For Us

I got Starbucks today. It was right by the hotel. I walked in and checked the menu, filter coffee. Great. Awesome. Checked behind the counter. Big coffee brewer. Perfect. I’m about to get actual Starbucks coffee. Hey good morning, may I have a venti filter coffee? Oh sorry, we’re having problems with the brewed coffee. That, buddy, is an understatement. Would you like an americano? It’s the same thing. It’s not the same thing but yes I would.

While I’m complaining, the internet at our hotel is as bad as I’ve ever seen the internet, including when we were in the middle of the freakin’ sea. A less patient person would have smashed at least one of their devices. Other than that, Sofia Village is a clean, cheap party flop house.

I’m very tired and I’m writing this from a ferry so I might make this an all text post. The pictures are the most time consuming part of these so today, I’ll just describe the photos to you.

We got up a little late yesterday but not too bad. Got our shit together and went down the hill to eat a meal.

Here’s a picture of Joe standing on top of the hill overlooking the ocean. You can see the ocean but there are a lot of power poles and wires in the way so try to look past those.

We walked around looking for this pasta place that we’d seen a couple of times on our previous wanderings.

Here’s a picture of us walking around not sure where the pasta place is.

This time, since we were looking for it, it was impossible to find, but we did go through the arts district. In the window of a gallery was a chrome sculpture of a naked woman on all fours on top of a disco ball. That says it all. I didn’t take a picture of it because I figured people would see me and misinterpret my motivations.

We finally found the pasta place.

Here’s a picture of joe sitting in front of a seafood linguini, and some other food. Most of it looks pretty good. The place is rustic. Aaaand we’re moving on.

Joe notices the two olive pit on his plate are different colors.

“You can tell which one of these was sitting in oil. This one’s like all stained and these ones are fresh looking.”

“I think they’re also different kinds of olives.”

“Ok smartass. Who died and made you king of the olives?”

Here’s a picture of me sitting at the table with a weird look on my face.

Our waitress lectured us on stuffed pastas. We ate too much food at this place: three pastas, two apps and dessert. The bus boy said we’d done a very good job because we ate everything. This made me happy.

After lunch I told Joe I didn’t want to walk around the same streets for the fifth time so we went back to the hotel. Our plan was to go to this club called Scorpios for the sunset and also because they had live music. The sunset was at 1942. We would hang out there for a couple hours, maybe have dinner somewhere and then head over to Cava Paradiso at 2330 for a DJ set by Heavy G and Mark Code.

We caught a cab over to Scorpios. 25 Euros. It was a ten minute ride. We walked into this place and saw a kiosk for “members.” Members? Uh oh. What was this exactly? It was a club, restaurant and half venue built on a slight rise overlooking the water. We got a couple of drinks and sauntered in. The sun had just hit the horizon when we hit the patio. Everyone was ooohing and aaahing and taking pictures so we walked down to the beach and took it in. It wasn’t bad. Pretty typical of the sunsets we’ve seen so far. Nice hues but there’s only so much the sun can do with a consistently cloudless sky. Once the sun slid below the hill we walked over to the area where the band was playing and checked out our fellow patrons. This was an older, richer yacht crowd, not really our people.

Here’s a picture of Joe putting on a brave face at Scorpios.

The music, as it was, mostly consisted of a recorded track with musicians occasionally plucking at unidentifiable string instruments. There was a clarinet. I knew that one. It wasn’t great. They were playing was a sunken pit with chairs and large beanbags and hors d’oeuvres. The only way in was down a staircase being carefully guarded by a pretty middle-aged woman who wasn’t going to put up with any your bullshit no matter how big your yacht was. Everyone at this place was either eating dinner or down in the pit. We were kind of milling around in no-man’s-land and watching the band for free. She kept looking over at us and glaring like she knew we were exploiting a loophole in her system, enjoying this fine music without being authorized to do so. Well, joke’s on her because we weren’t enjoying it at all.
This was when the first wisps of horror swept in around the edges of our minds. We had nearly four hours to kill before the show. We’d spent all of 20 minutes at Scorpios but we couldn’t stay here it was intolerable. The music, the people, the drink prices. Yes, we would retreat, but to where? We were on an unfamiliar part of the island, and going back would have involved another 25 euro cab ride and eating the cost of our tickets to, what would undoubtedly be, an incredible night of techno music and jumping around. The second part of the problem we needed to solve was getting from Paraga Beach to Paradise Beach. The two seemed very close on the map but when asked for walking directions, google maps suggested a crazy looping path using the terrifying, sidewalk-less, walled streets of Mykonos. And it was night.
We decided to just start walking and see what we could see. There was no staying at Scorpios, that we knew for sure. We set out along the beach heading East. We walked through three empty clubs in a row. Row upon row of deserted beach chairs. Employees clearing the padding and setting them in great stacks. It was getting chilly. There were a few people about but not many. We passed the last club and proceeded on what looked like a path towards the end of a rocky point that looked like it might go through to the other beach. After another 100 feet the path dropped sharply into the water.

Here’s a pretty picture of the sunset looking back at Scorpios from the dead end.

We turned back. We tried going up around a hostel but that didn’t get us anywhere. We walked, dejected, back towards Scorpios, the full scope of the problem blasting us in the face like the ceaseless wind.

“I don’t know why you want to go over there anyway,” I told Joe on the way back, “It’s going to be the same as here. More deserted beach clubs.”

“There’s more going on over there.”

“I doubt it. No one is out here.”

We had absolutely nothing to do and three and a half hours to do it with. We sat on a low rock wall and contemplated our predicament, lives, time, the sea. Later Joe would call this the nadir of the whole trip. I won’t argue, we were not happy.
There was a little taverna back up the road. We’d go there and eat something. That would take up some time. When we walked in and asked for a table, the hostess asked if we had reservations and a fresh wave of terror washed over me, what if they wouldn’t seat us? What if we had to go back to the wall? But it was fine, they just gave us a shitty table.
We ordered some average food and ate it slowly. Joe ordered refills from a guy and he glared at us but got the drinks. They keep serving us this digestif that Joe says, “tastes like the water from a vase.”

Here’s a picture of Joe petting a cat and the cat enjoying it very much.

During dinner, Joe had a flash of inspiration.

“Let’s ask the hostess if she knows a way to walk over to the other beach!”

“Why her?”

“She was the nicest.”

We asked her if she knew a way through. She went to get a coworker, our original waiter, a young man with a curious nature. He told us that there was a way.

“You’re going to need…”

“Google maps?” Joe guessed.

“Flashlights”

He told us to go back to the hostel – we were so close! – down the street from there is a hotel called Hotel Georgio. Go up the hill from the hotel and find a crumbled part in the wall. Go through there and you’ll be on a path. Take that path over the rocks – use your flashlights – and you’ll find Paradise. Beach.
This was the break we needed. We thanked both of them profusely, paid our check, and set out reinvigorated. We found the hotel, found the crumbled wall, just like the man said. We turned on our cellphone lights and walked out onto the rocks. It was a pretty easy walk from there. It would have been tough without light but we had it covered. Before we knew it we rounded a corner and saw Paradise beach laid out in front of us. Loud club music and colorful lighting spilled out onto the beach from several clubs. They were not empty.

“Looks like there’s a little bit more going on.” Joe said.

We pranced down onto the beach, thrilled to have anything at all to look at. There were three main clubs here on the beach, Paradise Beach Club, Guapaloca, and Tropicana, with our eventual destination, Cava Paradiso, way down on the end and up off the beach. We checked all three out before settling at Tropicana because they had DJ Terry.

Here’s a picture of a club and some club kids.

We sat at a table at Tropicana, talking shit, watching these people dance their faces off, and cracking each other up. That’s the great thing about our game. It travels well. It’s durable. And wouldn’t you know it, three hours and several tequila sodas after proclaiming that we’d reached the low point of our entire trip, Joe was ready to update our status.

“We’re nailing it!”

We met this guy who looked like Keith Richards who worked at Tropicana. He wore a scarf around his head and down his back with a CD tied to the end. A girl walked past dragging a dude by the hand.

“What are you guys doing?” She asked us.

What are we doing? What are you doing. Don’t ask us questions like that. We’re wondering where your parents are, that’s what we’re doing.
At the end of a very long day and post, we finally walked over to Cava Paradiso for Heavy G and Mark Code’s set. We danced hard for about an hour and a half and got the hell out of there.

Here’s a picture of Joe dancing with his hair in his face.

We were in a corner of the dance floor near a large fan. It was a confetti fan. There was a guy behind the fan. The guy’s only job was to fire the confetti fan at the right time. He only fired it once while we were there, but he did reload it so maybe he had a second act. When we got home Joe asked,

“What happened to Heavy G and Mark Code? Wasn’t there supposed to be another guy?”

“I think he was behind the confetti fan. I think Mark Code was the confetti fan guy.”

“Heavy G and Confetti Fan”