You must be trying telnet from Windows. The Windows telnet client is wonky, hiding any useful connection details that tells you if you've actually connected or not. But yes, a blinking cursor with no error means a successful connection, which means the port is both open and reachable from your client.
To compare, from a Unix/Linux telnet client I get:
$ telnet 8.8.8.8 53
Trying 8.8.8.8...
Connected to google-public-dns-a.google.com (8.8.8.8).
Escape character is '^]'.
Connection closed by foreign host.
$ telnet 4.2.2.1 53
Trying 4.2.2.1...
Connected to a.resolvers.level3.net (4.2.2.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.
