Boheme Mykonos

In Mykonos, the air is warm and sweet and smells of hay. It’s a powerful stimulant. Forget cocaine and cocktails, this air is the real reason for the island’s wild side. I’m also being a little wild; finding myself Mr Smith-less but resourceful, I decide to recruit a dinner date for my upcoming stay at Boheme Mykonos. Hello, Tinder.

Things don’t start off well – I chop half my thumb off while mixing a pre-date G&T. Blood spatters on my forehead and I emit a piercing scream. My first victim arrives on the crime scene: a hulking, morose, monosyllabic private chef, who looks nothing like his pictures and thievishly downs a pint of gin when my back’s turned. Dismissed.

Things improve with victim two. He arrives on a moped – the new white horse – and doesn’t seem psychotic. He doesn’t rob gin. He’s handsome, with conker-brown eyes and a Greek accent that sounds like Compare the Market’s meerkat. He is as silly as I am (very). We take a beachside stroll, establish an enjoyably insulting repartee and arrange to meet again for dinner. What begins as a horror film segues smoothly into rom-com.

A few days later, I’m beautifying before date two at Boheme Mykonos’ ravishing restaurant. It would be hard to find a setting more nurturing to romance than this hillside Hellenic hideout, whose bleached cubist suites gleam like teeth on a mountainous patch of Vrisi, overlooking the Aegean. (For better views, you’d need to bed down in a bird’s nest.) Talking of birds, a fleet of black-clad Aphrodites decorate reception. They waft around ethereally, proffering sherbet-y lemonade (made with garden-grown lemons, plus peppermint and honey) and chilled towels to sun-worshipping guests prostrate around the pool.

The milk-and-honey-hued suite I’m in has a giant white bed that I starfish in each night. (Two’s a crowd.) There’s an Acapulco chair by a desk I never sit at, a stash of books I never read, lights made from thick twists of rope with exposed bulbs, a shark-grey bathroom and a balcony with a Jacuzzi in which I eat cinnamon-dusted French toast for breakfast. Jog on, muesli.

Some time has passed since French-toast o’clock and I’ve worked up a hearty appetite doing nothing. In a clinging black dress, scented with Acqua Di Parma lotion plundered from my bathroom, I wander over to meet my Mr-Smith-in-training. He looks relaxed and handsome in his goldfish-print shirt, if a tad windswept from his moped ride.

‘Brush your hair,’ I suggest.
‘I can’t. I’ll look like I’ve been put in a microwave. My hair’s like an abused cat.’

You could accuse Mr Smith of many things, but dormant hair follicles are not one of them. I let sleeping cats lie, and don’t repeat the suggestion. I do, however, lend him a bit of my AdP body lotion, which I’ve stashed in my bag. (It’s too fragrant to put down.) Mr Smith is enthusiastic. ‘I smell like I own a villa on Lake Como,’ he declares.

At Boheme’s restaurant, we both become enamoured with a fellow guest. He looks like Acqua di Parma’s octogenarian poster boy: a suntan that hints at summers in the Caribbean, a pastel shirt I’d like to press my cheek against, a flashing watch, a low laugh and teeth as ivory as the island’s architecture. If he didn’t have a wife in tow, Mr Smith and I would have battled it out to be his deckhand.

Luckily, Mr Smith’s attention is elsewhere. ‘My gosh’, he muses, staring at the waiters’ uniforms. ‘I would like to find the man responsible for making men wear such tight trousers.’ Mr Smith – a keen windsurfer – is in possession of calves as muscular as his hair is wavy, so I can comprehend that skinny jeans might pose problems. In truth, the waiters’ attire is a little startling: beige trousers – much like long johns – matched with braces and long-sleeved white T-shirts, bear a striking similarity to the Droogs in Clockwork Orange.

Dinner is beyond reproach, however: dakos salad with feta, olives and capers; squid-ink spaghetti starring seafood so fresh, I’m surprised it doesn’t swing a few left hooks while we eat it. The cocktails – mango margarita for me; a martini for Mr – are magnificent, as is the lofty alfresco setting, decorated with jaw-drop views and ghostly white lanterns that flutter in the breeze like nurses’ skirts.

Over the next few days, Mr Smith takes me on a whirlwind tour of Mykonos. We sip melon katerinaki cocktails on the balcony of a tiny bar in Little Venice. (I promised Mr Smith I wouldn’t tell you the bar’s name: it’s Galleraki.) We stock up on beach provisions at a supermarket that screens catwalk shows by the cheese counter and has a DJ by the crisps (albeit a DJ that looks like your mate’s mum). We hike to a beach that nobody else is on (to quote Mr Smith: ‘This is almost romantic’). We eat souvlaki at Fat Tony’s – not its official name – we dance to terrible music in expensive bars redolent of CK One and we pay a midnight trip to an abandoned mine (yes, really). According to Mr Smith, this is ‘a powerful insight into the island’s industrial and mining history’. According to me, it’s creepy. 

Faced with the prospect of waking up in a sepulchral mine pit whose graffiti inscriptions include the unwelcome promise, ‘I’M ALWAYS WATCHING’, I’m relieved to return to Boheme Mykonos, where the only thing risky is check-out – risky, as I might never do it.

Somewhere far away, real life lurks on the horizon, obscured behind Boheme Mykonos’ dazzling panoramas, mega breakfasts and tree-filled gardens (which double up as a peaceful setting for facials and clam-shell massages). Holiday romances are as mysterious as the gods – who knows how they will end? One thing’s for life: my love for Boheme.