As I mentioned, the open-air museum island of Delos is only reachable by ferry from the neighboring island of Mykonos. It really is the archaeological highlight of the Cyclades, and even some of the cruise-ship passengers were persuaded to forgo the hedonistic delights of Mykonos Town, Paradise Beach, and the allegedly even better Super Paradise Beach for a visit to the ruins. Mind you, they were marched around the site in super-quick time, in groups of about 40, and then were shepherded onto the first available ferry back to Mykonos. So they only got about an hour and a half on the island, which was barely enough in my view to walk from the harbour through the main temple area to see the iconic Lions of Delos.
The Avenue of Lions
Unfortunately, these aren’t even the real thing – they’re very good replicas. The originals are now in the little museum at the far edge of the site, which none of the cruise ship tours actually reached. And even if you did get that far, the original lions were in a room that was closed off due to lack of staff, so you couldn’t actually get up close to them anyway!
There were also quite a lot of people making independent day-trips to the island. Their ticket allowed them three hours on Delos, before they had to be on the return ferry back to Mykonos. There was one extremely annoying chap on our trip who had read this in his Lonely Planet guide book, and went on and on at great length about how we’d get kicked off the island before we’d finished exploring it. Our very patient tour manager kept explaining to him that no, we had a group ticket with different terms and conditions, but he clearly didn’t believe her! If it’s written in Lonely Planet it must be gospel!
In fact, we had two visits of 4.5 hours on Delos, catching the last boat back each day. That was plenty of time to see the island slowly and thoroughly – slowly was necessary because of the heat and lack of shade; thoroughly because there was just so much to see.
The main street in Delos after all the cruise ship tours had left
I absolutely loved it. It was definitely a major highlight of the trip. And it was great to be there just before closing time, with hardly any other visitors around, wandering through the ruins without any noise or distraction – apart of course from the ferry sounding its foghorn to tell us to get on board as it was preparing to leave!
