But back to Milos. Walkable from our hotel are incredible seafood restaurants, bakeries, and beaches. We spent our first day here rotating between all three.
Don’t judge us, we really tried to get Mimi to wear sunglasses.
Mimi shredding the three inch surf, brah.
Quinn reflecting on his post-uterine existence. Or pooping.
Just saving this photo here to pull back up during her teenage years.
“Mimi’s boat.”
Another dinner along the docks rounded out the day. The slow cooked lamb was easily among the top three dishes we’ve ever had.
Followed by more ice cream!
Mimi shoveled it in, worried that we’d remember this was the second time in a week.
And breakfast was just as good. You may be surprised that toddlers enjoy waffles drowning in fresh Greek yogurt with fruit and honey on top. Shocking.
My intention wasn’t to fill this post with food pics, but that’s pretty much all we did here for the first 36 hours.
But then things got a little more interesting. Milos is actually a pretty big island, encompassing 61 square miles, with 5,000 permanent residents. There are a few bigger villages sprinkled across the island, with small clusters of farm houses in between. We’re staying in Adamas, the port town, but wanted to also check out some other areas of the island.
The most practical way to visit the different villages is to rent a car. Well, as practical as renting a car in a foreign country can be.
The sign on the door loosely translates to “Caution: Driver has not used a manual transmission in several years.”
I’ll admit that I kept the car in first gear for at least the first hundred yards. I didn’t want to stall out until I was well beyond the view of the rental agency.
And then filling up the tank was my next adventure. Do I pump my own gas? Do I tip? Driving a car in another country is tricky, and keeping it fueled up is nearly as tough. But the service station employee was clearly used to tourists, and made it easy for me. Turns out they pump for you, tipping doesn’t seem to be a thing, and I managed to not drive off with the pump handle still in my car. Although, I did briefly roll forward a bit when I forgot that the car was manual. Mimi was in the backseat, but thankfully she’s too young to know what just happened. If she was a teenager, that would have been rough.
Gassed up and quickly remembering how to drive stick, we packed up our go cart and loaded up the family. The Griswalds go to Milos!
Thankfully our first day’s destination was a nearby beach with very little traffic along the way. There’s quite a steep learning curve driving in another country, with loosely enforced driving laws, in a tiny car, with manual transmission. The kids didn’t know how hairy it could have been, but Aimee did, and she was a saint. She deftly navigated both the route and my adrenaline.
But it’s hard to be too anxious when this is the view.
Of course, it’s also hard to keep your eyes on the road. But we made it!
Our destination was a quiet little beach recommended to us by Sasha at our hotel. The water was calm, and it was on the south side of the island, away from that day’s wind direction.
Mimi working on her zen garden.
But we only stayed for an hour or so. We didn’t want to overdo the sun exposure for our kids, and the beach was really more for a generation above or below us (more money or fewer kids). The sun cabanas in our price range were packed together pretty densely, and we didn’t want to ruin someone’s paradise with a flying sand missile or a jarringly loud infant fart. That wasn’t in their trip brochure.
I don’t know if it was the sun or my driving, but the kids were wiped out that afternoon.
Of course, that wasn’t a problem for Aimee and I. We’re mostly through the jet lag ourselves, but we’ll never say no to a two-hour family nap.
That evening, Aimee and I thought we’d venture out a bit after we put the kids to bed. I know I’ve evangelized cell phone baby monitor apps in the past, but I really can’t imagine traveling without them, and certainly not going out. We don’t attempt this often, but the conditions were perfect. Our hotel was safe, and this was right across the street.
However, the restaurant’s WiFi was spotty, so our plan didn’t work quite as well as we had hoped. Our date night ended up just being one of us sipping our beer while the other checked on the kids. Switch, repeat.
But even if the company was infrequent, the view was spectacular. Milos really is something special.
