The sun is beating down on Super Paradise Beach and your toned bodies are sizzling on neatly placed loungers.
At Paraj, a new restaurant overlooking this coveted spot – open just five days before I visited a few weeks ago – 100g tins of Iranian caviar are sold for £1,030 each, while a small slice of Australian black truffle is sprinkled on top Can be lunch for £107. Drink? Maybe a Methuselah – eight bottles in one – of French rosé wine Chateau Romassan, a bargain at £2,230. If it’s drunk at all: Many visitors, including ousted BHS tycoon Philip Green, come to the island’s beach clubs to spray fellow dancers like Formula 1 stars on the podium with champagne.
The small Cycladic island of Mykonos (just 33 square miles) has always had a wild side. But in recent years it’s gone crazy – all the more reason, many say, to give it a try.
Mykonos Town, above, is the most touristy part of the island and sees many cruise ships. But it’s also inherently Cycladic, says Oliver, a maze of whitewashed houses and cobbled streets peppered with souvenir shops, bars, and inviting restaurants
Supermodels Gigi Hadid, Kate Moss and Emily Ratajkowski are pictured here at the opening of Nammos Village shopping center in Mykonos in 2018
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Mariah Carey, supermodels Kate Moss and Gigi Hadid, pop star Justin Bieber and a long list of English footballers and Instagram influencers flock here every year to celebrate peacocks and parties.
The trend arguably started in the 1960s when Jackie Onassis, Marlon Brando and Grace Kelly were lured in by the 300+ days of sunshine a year. Brigitte Bardot pouted for photos wearing only a towel here.
Before mass tourism, there were only a few hotels and the island’s famous windmills. Today 16 remain, mostly built by the Venetians in the 16th century, with seven towering over the capital, Chora.
The smart set is now hanging out at Mykonos’ beach clubs – Super Paradise is one – throwing back Whispering Angel rosé and ordering platters of pricey seafood.
However, one afternoon I meet Gill and Sheila, both from Warwick. These feisty friends are in their 80s – and on their first trip abroad since Covid.
“Look at the water!” says Gil. “It’s like a millpond. It’s so wonderful to get away after being locked at home for so long. We haven’t been further than Southwold in two years.’
Mykonos Town (Chora is just the Greek word for “town”) is the most touristy part of the island and sees a lot of cruise ships. But it’s also Cycladic by nature: a maze of whitewashed houses and cobbled streets, peppered with souvenir shops, bars and welcoming restaurants.
This summer promises to be a vintage season. The beach clubs and restaurants order extra Wagyu beef, king crab and champagne.
Many places – not least some of the buildings in the capital – are getting a fresh coat of paint. And since they’re about €150 a day, I’m hoping the mahogany sunbeds at Nammos — perhaps the island’s most over-the-top beach club, a favorite of DiCaprio and Green — have also been spruced up.
Russia has typically been a key Mykonian market but bookings for Moscow have plummeted. One of Vladimir Putin’s largest yachts is said to have been anchored off the coast for weeks last summer. A waiter told me it was “the size of an island”.
Oliver enjoys a cocktail at a bar in the Little Venice area of Mykonos Town
Hotel Santa Marina is the only hotel in Mykonos with a private beach. It also has a lively branch of Buddha Bar (above)
But squirting bubbly isn’t for everyone, so a stop at Santa Marina, about 10 minutes outside of town, is well worth considering. It’s the only hotel in Mykonos that has a private beach, so you’re not paying for a lounger.
The hotel started out as the private home of a Greek tycoon who bought an entire peninsula near Ornos Bay in the south of the island. It now has 101 rooms and suites, plus 13 swanky villas in the hills above the main hotel.
There are two restaurants: Mykonos Social, helmed by world-travelling British chef Jason Atherton, and a lively branch of Buddha Bar, the high-end pan-Asian chain with branches in Monaco, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Paris.
Thanks to the hotel, we one day cruise down the Aegean in a rigid-hull boat to Delos, the nearby holy island, and circumnavigate the 3,000-year-old ruins. Then we eat sushi aboard a traditional Greek kaiki or sailboat and swim in the refreshing sea.
Beach club Scorpios — open to all but now owned by the Soho House group — looks good too, plays chilled dance music, and offers sunset views and shrimp and sea bass ceviche with lime and chili.
On our last evening we sip a cocktail in Chora’s “Little Venice” – a row of bars perched on stilts over the sea and facing the sunset – three or four powerful waves hit our table, drenching us and our neighbors. The waiters, who know their stuff, mop up the tide with towels.
We follow that with dinner at Kadena, a lovely, reasonably priced waterfront eatery — for grilled sea bream with tabbouleh and unparalleled people-watching — and finish a few doors down with pistachio ice cream from DaVinci.
Only an unexpected fireworks display from a superyacht moored across the harbor is a sudden reminder that this is a billionaire’s playground, after all – though mere mortals like me can enjoy it, too.
