Athens to Aegina: Day Six

 

My daughter had planned day six to be a day to boat to a Greek island for the day. She had penciled in Hydra island which was a 2+ hour journey each way by ferry but we all had our fill of sitting in mass transportation vehicles and so we did a last minute change and got a high speed ferry to the island of Aegina, probably one of the closest islands of consequence to Athens. 

We booked our tickets the night before and arrived at the "departure gate" only to see that the gate was merely an entrance to probably a half mile of docks along the bay, lined with dozens of ferries of all different sizes, none with a sign advertising destination. We walked around confused for awhile before I finally found a bus driver of a tour bus washing his windows and asked him. He said he couldn't speak English and turned back to his work but I thanked him anyway and started to walk away. He took pity on my and said something that I understood to be, "what are you looking for?" I showed him my smart phone with the high speed ferry to Aegina listed and he did some sign language indicated it was to our right on the other side of a large ferry blocking our view. I thanked him again and we were on our way and found the ferry we needed. 

Disappointingly, the windows of the ferry were not very clear like the tour bus windows. But it was only a 40 minutes ride across a bay of water so I didn't miss a lot. We arrived at the island of Aegina and walked around for awhile getting our bearings. We had heard that there were more ruins but the island was bigger than we anticipated and so we found a bus station and schedule of a bus that could take us to a town a lot closer to the ruins on the other side of the island. We hoped to hike up the hill from town to see the ruins and hike back down for lunch before returning by bus to the port of Aegina later in the afternoon. Best laid plans of mice and men.

While waiting on the bus, we walked around a bit checking out the beach and found this old man repairing the side of a boat.

Another boat in serious need of work.

The bus came and we hopped aboard. The bus station wasn't open and the sign said to buy tickets on the bus so the four of us owed a total of 8 Euro for the trip. I gave the bus driver a 20 Euro note but he said that was no good. I told him that was all I had so he told me to just have a seat and he would deal with me later. When we got off, he gave me change in small coins. I found that not many places in Greece would change out anything 20 Euro and larger, probably yet another sign of their economic troubles back in 2012.

Before getting to our destination town, the bus stopped at the ruins on top of the hill. In a spur of the moment decision, we got off there instead of our original plan to hike up from the town below. That was perhaps the best decision of the trip. Later after exploring the ruins, we hiked down to the village for lunch and it was a very steep hike and a lot longer than we had anticipated. I'm not sure if I could have hiked up from the village and down in the time that we had available. 

The town was mostly deserted and when we came to a café to eat along the beach, there were only two other tourist families there. But as we were eating our lunch, a large group of Education First (EF) students arrived and things got busy fast. We saw lots of EF tours during our vacation and they always were filled mostly with loud, obnoxious and obviously very bored American students.  The only good thing was that they were always in a hurry so if I found myself overrun by one of their tours, I just had to stand for five minutes until they passed me by and then it was peaceful again until the next EF group overtook me.

Slightly out of order but this was the hill we hiked down to the village up next to the Saronic sea. In the far distance across the sea is Athens spread out along the water. We caught the bus back to the port of Aegina and there had our first and only negative experience of the entire trip.

The bus driver back was a pretty aggressive driver and our youngest started feeling a little car sick when we finally arrived in Aegina. We sat down in the shade of a padded playground for toddlers as she caught her breath and recovered. Shortly after sitting down, two teenage boys came walking in smoking cigarettes and making loud sounds trying to get our attention. We ignored them since they sat on the opposite side of the playground from us. Eventually though they decided that wasn't enough and transferred to another bench facing us from about 8 feet away. This time, I was fairly certainly the were shouting obscenities in Greek at us and my wife using her translator app on the phone confirmed it. We opted to just get up and walk away from the situation while the two boys continued to shout obscenities at us. Fortunately they didn't follow us.

We walked back through town checking out shops in the narrow back alleys and found a nice café in a shady alley. We ordered some appetizers and carbonated lemonade to enjoy until our ferry arrived. 

Being in Greece, we ordered more smoked fish marinated in oil and a container of tzatziki sauce to enjoy with the loaf of bread that is always served fresh whenever you sit down at a restaurant. As I have mentioned before, there is never any pressure to turn over the tables for profit so we were free to linger and enjoy our snack. Also, short of one restaurant in the Acropolis Museum, I was never asked for a tip the entire trip. They just present your bill, scan your credit card and give you a receipt. There is never the traditional paper with the tip line that you have to fill out. I wish America could just pay a fair wage and get rid of tipping which seems to get more pervasive as time goes by.

With our time drawing near, we walked back to where our ferry would arrive, checking out the floating markets that Aegina is known for. When the day was done, they could simply retract their displays onto the bow of the boat and head off to someplace else. Quite clever I thought.

As our ferry arrived, I was able to take one more photo looking back on the port before we boarded and motored back to Athens, arriving just as the sun set. 16,400 steps.