It's a small island and a small town, but the hip and groovy concentrate in only one part of the town and the wanker-haven of Super Paradise Beach on the other side of the island. Forget Super Paradise Beach - a disco set on the sand where pricey booze and preening seem to be the main themes. Instead, Fokos Beach set on a unspoiled cove is found by driving down a discrete dirt road on the northern coast. It's quiet and secluded, with a pebbly but pretty beach and a modest but funky welcoming taverna in which to sit and admire the view while you dry off after a swim. Perfect!
A dry, dusty and very brown island at the end of the summer, its port town of Mykonos is a pretty collection of whitewashed houses around the small harbour and surrounding hills. Frenetic traffic made up of buzzing rental quad bikes and scooters and tiny, wobbly 3 wheeled trucks of the locals (given the compact size of the place it doesn't take too many vehicles to become frenetic), a tangle of squeezy backstreets that tourists don't venture into in any great numbers. All in all, quite a nice place for sunning around a hotel pool and venturing into town on foot and exploring the island by bus, car, quad bike or scooter. Pre-tourism, the place must have survived on fishing and sparse farming of a few goats and onions on rocky land holdings along the narrow roads lined with stone walls. Some grand houses are scattered around back road hills for who-knows-who rich bastards. Tiny red-roofed Greek Orthodox churches proliferate, 365 of them, one for each day of the year we were told but a Google search suggests about 250.