Mykonos is glamorous and beautiful – if you have cash to burn

Mykonos is not for the faint of heart.

The island is well known as a glamorous destination for the world’s most wealthy and famous. Come the booming summer months of July and August, the island swells with the A-listers, B-listers, C-listers, and D-listers, along with hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers, hard-partying dance-music junkies, and cruise-shippers.

 While just 33 square miles in size, the sunny and cool island is stuffed with hip boutique hotels, thumping beach clubs, haute couture shops, white sandy beaches, whitewashed alleyways, and swanky restaurants.

If this all sounds a little like Ibiza, I’ll stop you right there: the cool rich kids have moved on. They are in Mykonos now. If there were any doubts, a look off any bay on Mykonos’ coast reveals waters swamped with freshly scrubbed yachts, superyachts and mega-yachts.

Over the last several years, the number of international arrivals to Mykonos has nearly doubled.

But where does that leave the rest of the teeming masses that jostle for a spot at Mykonos’ glittering carnival?

For us, visiting Mykonos is a far different experience. The doors that simply open for the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Branson, Bella Hadid, and billionaire Stavros Niarchos III stay closed for mere mortals. A day at a beach club can empty out a savings account, and that is if you can even score a cabana at all. In the hottest of hot spots, the staff only have time to cater to millionaires and billionaires.

Those were my assumptions before I stepped off the plane to see what Mykonos is like for regular folks – many of which I found were right by the time I left the island a few days later. Other expectations, I found, were pleasantly incorrect.

Here is what it was like to visit the world’s hottest party island in the peak of the season:

Gorgeous, glamorous and luxurious, Mykonos is Greece’s answer to Ibiza.