AEGINA ISLAND, GREECE

After Rome I was spent. I was having a good time, but definitely noticing that things were just flying by too fast for me to properly appreciate them. I heard Athens was dirty and the people weren’t civilized and I knew that if I went straight there and tried to see the sights in the first couple of days I would just be in a haze. I decided I should try to take a short vacation and the Greek Islands seemed like a perfect place since they are fairly cheap, the weather was decent in early spring and English is widely understood. I read a lot about the different options in my Let’s Go – Greece book and the obvious choice seemed to be Aegina Island, which is only 15 miles from the port city of Piraeus.

My goal was to rent an apartment for a week or so and do as little as possible, but definitely do my own cooking. I researched a lot from the free Internet terminal at my hotel in Rome, but unfortunately just about every place I found was closed for the winter until at least April 1st and I was to arrive about 10 days before that. I sent a few e-mails and got some leads, but nothing definite. The Greek student I met in Venice had suggested Aegina also since it’s the only nearby island that doesn’t shut down completely for the winter as quite a few people who work in Piraeus and even Athens live in Aegina Town. There is another large town on Aegina called Aegina Marina, but it seemed to be geared only toward tourism and was also closed until April. My plan was to take the ferry directly after leaving the Athens airport and find a hotel in Aegina Town and hopefully find a cheap apartment somewhere on the island in the first two days and then rent it for a week.

I landed in Athens at their new, modern airport and was feeling very good about everything since I would finally have a chance to relax a bit. I found the bus that takes you straight to the harbor and climbed aboard. I thought it was only a 30 minute trip, but this was a local bus that kept stopping and I got pretty annoyed when it took a full hour, but whatever, I was at the port. Piraeus is one of the largest ports in the world so it’s a bit overwhelming, but fortunately the bus terminates right in front of the gate where the Aegina boats leave. I was expecting one or two slots for boats at that gate, but there was maybe ten or more. I had just missed a slow boat at 4 p.m. so I had to buy a ticket for the Flying Dolphin fast boat service at 5 p.m. I paid €11 at a little storefront right by the bus stop and I thought that was expensive since I had read the tickets were normally under €9. I would later find out that you can buy them from a ticket booth closer to the boats for €8.50. I had a cheap gyro at a café next door and was soon on board.

The Flying Dolphin boat is like a 747, seating-wise, but not as long. It’s comfortable enough, but you can’t go outside or anything. About 45 minutes later the boat pulled into Aegina Town’s port. I made my way out and headed down the ramp toward the town. I had a hotel in mind that I read about, but I thought I would try the travel agency in town that Let’s Go recommends first to see if they had a good recommendation or even knew about apartments. It’s about 50 feet from the end of the boat ramp so I was there right away. I went in and there was one woman working there. I began to explain what I was looking for and she asked, “Are you Mr. Wade?” It turns out she was one of the people I was e-mailing with and she had sent a reply after I left my hotel that morning telling me to come to her office so it was an amazing coincidence that I did anyway. She said they have some apartments in town and Aegina Marina is, in fact, empty at this time. She called another woman on the phone who arrived a few minutes later to take me to the apartments in a small car.

She said there were a few apartments to choose from and the price for each is different. I was hoping to find something under €300 per week and even then it better be pretty nice. She said it was about 1 kilometer from town, but it was really more like a mile. We arrived at the building just before sunset and it looked good. She said a downstairs unit would be €210 per week and €250 for an upstairs one. She didn’t even want to show me the downstairs one and that was fine. The upstairs one had a very large private balcony with a sea view and actually about a 270-degree view altogether. It had a decent sized bedroom with a large bed, a small living room with a sofa and a TV, a bathroom and a small kitchen. It was perfect. The sun was setting and the view looked like it was out of a brochure (even though the place is about a 5-minute walk from the beach.) I said okay and put down a €50 deposit and she took my passport and gave me the keys.

The point was to do as little as possible so I am not going to give a blow-by-blow description. I slept very well the first night and the next day I walked into town to rent a bicycle. That was nice, but the chain kept falling off and it was too small to be comfortable for long rides so I switched to a scooter for two days after that and rode around the island a lot and also stocked up on groceries from the large store at my end of the town.

The island is about 50 square miles and it takes about 30 minutes to get from one side to the other, but I mostly rode around the perimeter. The island is known, or calls itself, the Pistachio Capital of the World and they might be right. Nearly every plot of land that doesn’t have a vacation home on it has an orchard of pistachio trees on it, although they were completely bare when I was there. The other thing that added to the overall scenery was the abundance of wildflowers. There were various colors, but I would say about 90% of the land had freshly blossoming yellow flowers poking through the wild grass. It was really beautiful and gave the place a look very unlike any tropical island or any other island I had scene.

On my first journey I got to the extreme other end and the scooter stalled going down a hill because the idle wasn’t adjusted properly. I wasn’t near anything, but I pushed the thing a few minutes and came across an older man walking his dog. He knew a little English, but didn’t know how to start the thing. I thought about pushing it a bit further to find some young people since they all seem to ride scooters, but he insisted I come into his home while he called the company I rented it from. He did and they said they would be there in twenty minutes. I just wanted to ask how to start it, but he never handed me the phone or even spoke in English to them. I was trapped, but it turned out to be very pleasant. He offered me Greek Coffee and I accepted and he gave me a plate of fig-like things from the tree in his backyard.

He had a brother in America and we were able to chat some, but I know no Greek and his English was minimal. Still, it was the sort of thing that actually becomes the highlight of a trip since it was so unexpected. The coffee and figs were good and about 40 minutes later a few guys from the shop rode up and had it started in a few seconds. The little kid who rented it to me told me about the electric starter button, but never mentioned you need to be holding the brake to make it work. They could have told me that on the phone, but I wasn’t in a hurry and as I said, it was a very nice experience. Back on my way I made it through Aegina Marina and saw the touristy town on the island, but also saw that it was, in fact, shut down. I think there were a couple of restaurants open, but with few patrons and all the hotels and such were empty. The weather was nice, but still not quite warm enough for swimming at the beach.

On Monday the weather got a bit cooler and I had returned my scooter. I started getting a bit anxious and nervous, but I wasn’t sure why. I had some writing work to do, but the only internet place on the island that would let me hook up my laptop was completely disabled and they kept telling me to try again the next day. On Tuesday they were still unable to function so I decided to go into Athens on Wednesday and bring my computer. I also wanted to make onward travel plans so on Wednesday I took the 45-minute boat ride into Piraeus and then walked to the Metro station for the 20-minute ride into central Athens. It was quite a bit nicer than I had expected. I guess that pre-Olympics clean up really took.

I found an Internet place to hook up and thankfully it had a fast connection since I had to download a ton of files to work on. I then went to the STA Travel around the corner and bought a ticket for the following Tuesday to Cairo. I immediately felt better. I would stay in Aegina until Sunday then spend two days exploring Athens before I fly to Egypt. I had a lot of work to do with those downloaded files, but it was nice to have something to be productive with during such a relaxed time.

I also was renting DVDs every day for €2 each from a place in town and watching them on my laptop. The screen on my computer actually looks far better than any TV of the same size so it really came in handy.

On Wednesday evening I rented another scooter for the next 3 days, mainly just for transportation. It was a wonderful 30-minute walk into town, but the stores kept erratic hours so sometimes I would have to make two trips just to accomplish something simple. I also cruised around the island quite a bit more for the next few days. There are quite a few small towns on the island, but almost all of them are nothing but summer homes, mostly for Athens residents. There was little car traffic and not much scooter traffic either at this time of the year so it was extremely pleasant just cruising around in the open air at any pace I wished.

Friday was Greek Independence (from Turkey) Day and I was told there would be a big celebration in town. I arrived just before it started at noon and found probably the lamest parade I have ever seen. It was basically every school kid in town sort of marching in class groups in a uniform that looked a little like a school uniform and a little like an army uniform. The groups would march by in a rag tag fashion without making eye contact with anyone, or looking straight ahead either. I guess this is just a tradition and no one questions it. After that there was a stage in the middle of the street with some tradition Greek dancing in traditional costumes, mainly by groups of other young children. The weather was nice and it’s a bank holiday so the town was completely packed. There are about 10 or 12 large bar/cafes that line the street of the scenic port and they were always doing good business, but on this day every last seat was taken.

Another thing about their Independence Day is the museums and archeological sights are free for some reason. I had put off going to the museum and sight in Aegina so it worked out perfectly. There is a column around the corner from the port that sits above ruins of an old city all dating back to about 500 B.C. There is also a museum out front with artifacts and so forth that was actually very impressive since it was the first Greek Museum I had been to. It really is amazing that they had these perfect-looking sculptures being made 2,500 years ago. The people at Machu Picchu try to make you thing that is impressive, but that looked like it was built by cavemen and it is only 800 years old or so. It’s not even close.

The last weekend was pretty crowded in town, but I mainly just kept to myself. I was enjoying doing my own cooking and hanging out in my apartment and on my balcony. I was finally able to have decent portions of meat after spending all those weeks in areas where meat is hard to come by and very expensive. Sunday came and I had returned my scooter the day before so I had to walk with my backpack into town to buy a ticket for the noon ferry. This was a slow boat, but it cost almost as much as the fast ones. It also took almost two hours so I would not do that again. This one carried cars so I think almost everyone else aboard was a driver so it was their only option. A bit before two I arrived in Athens.