Aegina Island

A lazy Saturday and we don’t know what we’re going to do until we decide to take the train all the way out to Piraeus, the port city that we get to come back to on the cruise in May.  We take the

“painted” trains as Oscar calls them because the Green line is the only one covered in graffiti.  It sounds much nicer to call them “painted” and he’s excited about it because they’re all different colors.  We arrive in the port and I pull an audible

  by walking into a ferry place and asking if there is a ferry we can catch.  We can leave in 30 minutes for Aegina and come back at 3pm on a different boat.  Yes, please.  I feel like you can’t spend this much time in Greece and not visit a Greek island.  So, we head out to

Aegina in a fast ferry, but it’s hot and stuffy in there, I’m glad we’re on the slow boat coming back.  I could see if you’re a commuter wanting the “fast” one because it saves 20 minutes, but everything that is cool about a ferry ride is gone.

  You can’t sit outside and watch the world go by, enjoy the wind or the water or even see anything.  Not for tourists I would say.  But it gets us there in good time and we head to an archeological site that you can see from the ferry terminal.  We get to touch the water, once we

discuss how they are not any sharks in these waters and hike up to a temple of Apollo.  This is not a hike like any of the others we’ve done and this is a very old settlement because there are Mycenean artifacts linked in here and stuff from 2200 BCE.  We find a little taverna off the water and sit and

 have lunch.  I get schnitzel of all things that is delicious and unexpected.  Oscar wants to order the octopus balls, but I know not even John would eat those, so that’s a no.  We’ve great food today starting with the cheesy pigs in a blanket we got at Bread Factory when Oscar got his doughnut. 

 They were amazing, this meal was great, and the bread with olive oil, goat cheese and salami that we have in the apartment for dinner is amazing.  Maybe it’s the atmosphere and nothing else.  We also discover pistachio butter on Aegina.  Which I didn’t even know was something that could happen,

but it is so yummy.  Like peanut butter with sugar in it or Nutella in it, so we get a jar of that too.  A slow ferry back allows us to sit on the deck, enjoy the sun and the breeze and watch Athens grow in front of us.  You can see from the ferry how it has just spread

out like a blanket in the foothills of all of these mountains.  You can make out the Acropolis because of the no skyscrapers rule.  You can see the smog that still hovers over Athens as well.  It’s really easy to discern from out here and this is with all the changes they made for the Olympics.  This is

the “clean air” of Athens.  I can’t imagine what it was like before and it’s not like you can tell when you’re in the city and breathing it.  We walk to the church in Piraeus that John wanted to see and then head back to Athens for our stay-in dining.