Aigina / Aegina

OMG you guuuuuuuyyysssssssssssssss ... I can't even with Aigina!  It is the most perfect little island ever.

Aigina

So, as I mentioned in my Athens post, Harri hadn't been to Greece before, whereas it's my favorite country.  Accordingly, she was really keen to see a Greek island as well as Athens.  I was also keen that she should do so because it's important that everyone goes to a Greek island!  Luckily - also as I mentioned last time - Piraeus is a quick 40 minutes on the tube from the centre of Athens, and from Piraeus, boats go frequently to not one, not two, but three islands just off the coast.  The choices are Hydra, Poros and Aigina (which for some reason is spelt Aegina on the interwebs but in Greece is spelt Aigina), each of which has its own website.  Of them, Aigina is the closest and most easily accessible because it's only 40 minutes by boat from Piraeus and boats go really frequently.  It was really this that decided us, because we didn't have much time overall in Athens so we didn't want to spend too much time on boats or waiting around Piraeus.  In addition, Aigina has a really cool history - it has been inhabited since about 3500 BC!  It was most prosperous between about 900 BC and 480 BC, and it minted the first Greek coins way back in the seventh century BC.  Further, it was actually the first capital of modern Greece from 1827 to 1829 - beat that for a random fact!

Tom in first class

We got on the early train in the morning and hit the port by 08:00, all ready for the first boat of the day.  After a bit of a kerfuffle at the port (the boat moved three times in the harbor, necessitating the entire queue of waiting passengers to move with it) we finally jumped on and settled in.  It's a serious business getting the ferry to Aigina - you get allocated seats and everything!  Romy and I were sitting at the front of the boat, while Harri was off to the side and lucky Tom got bumped up to first class.  Posh!

Romy Harri and Tom at Aigina port

The ferry ride over was pretty uneventful, and we landed at the Aigina port a little while later.  We jumped off to find ourselves in the most adorbs little town.  Seriously - it was so cute, with one main promenade boardering the harbor/port, lined with trees and (importantly) ice-cream parlors, pistachio vendors, and the usual tourist shops.  Aigina itself isn't really a tourist destination per se - its visitors are mostly Greeks who have come over from the mainland, so it doesn't feel like it's mass-produced, but it's good to know that you can buy sunscreen if you need it!

We debated which way to go, as we wanted to find a nice beach, and a quick consultation with GoogleMaps told us that there was just such a beach about 20 minutes away to our right.  We decided to head that way, because if we headed left, then the next beach would be about an hour's walk.

The walk to the beach

This was a good decision, because in true Greek style, the beach that we had chosen was actually at least an hour's walk away.  We were totally confused at first because we couldn't believe that it could be so far away, given GoogleMaps's instructions.  However, eventually we saw the umbrellas lining the beachfront looming up in the distance, remembered that we were in Greece, and pressed on.  I tell ya what though, first - the walk was absolutely stunning.  We didn't have to come off the seafront once, so to our right was the gleaming green and blue sea, above us was the blazing sky, and to our lefts were tiny white cottages lining the street.  We crunched along the sandy footpath, enjoying the view and - of course - taking zillions of photographs.  I don't know why we bothered, as literally none did it justice.

When we finally reached the beach, it was so perfect.  We literally could not have mail-ordered a more picturesque, perfect and private beach.  Although there was a shop/cafe there with ice-cream (oh, and other food, and loos), there was no-one else there.  We had the choice of the sunbeds and umbrellas entirely to ourselves!  After we settled in and ordered some frozen cocktails, it was time to put in some serious relaxation.  I take my tanning very seriously, so I immediately fell asleep, whereas the others read magazines and books and took turns dipping in and out of the sea.  We had opened a tab when we got there, and the shopkeeper would periodically appear to see whether there was any tiny whim of ours which he could fulfill (generally this took the form of more frozen cocktails, but we did manage to make the effort of ordering and eating lunch at one point).  Tom decided to wander further down the coast, so he left us for a bit, but the rest of the day was pretty much spent the same way.  It was the most ideal day - and leaving at about 17:30 was too early, frankly!  However, since we had to get back to catch the ferry, eventually we packed up and got going.

Snails covering the fence outside the beach

Rather than walk back, we took a cab so that we could explore the tiny town before we got on the ferry back - this was another excellent decision!  We soon discovered that behind the promenade was the cutest, tiniest town, with cobbled streets lined with artesan shops selling everything from clothing to pistachios (Aigina is known for good pistachio crops) and pharmaceuticals and natural remedies.  It was the nicest little town and I'm so glad we got to explore it.  If you're feeling more culturally minded than we were on the day, you can also visit the Temple of Aphaia and the Church of Agios Nektarios, which we saw from the outside but didn't venture into due to lack of time.

Finally, it was back to the ferry for us.  We were pretty shattered by all the energetic and aggressive sun-bathing we'd done that day, so we stayed at the hotel for supper as we could eat on the rooftop.  It was the perfect end to the perfect day.

If you're going to Athens and you want a daytrip to the most magical place ever, please go to Aigina!  I'm sure Poros and Hydra are lovely too, but Aigina is perfect.  I really hope that I can get back there soon.

Athens

As I said in my last post, Greece is my favorite country in the world.  I was therefore absolutely horrified to learn that my lovely friend Harri had never been!  The horror!  In order to rectify this problem, we planned a quick trip to Athens.  We gave the organising to Harri again because she is brilliant at that, including amazing at getting the most bargainous flights and hotels.

At Peripatos ...!

Harri booked us into the Melia in central Athens, and we planned to spend four days out there.  In retrospect, this was the most perfect length of time - we had enough time to see everything we wanted, and also to relax.  Athens isn't that big, so you can walk around it really easily (if you can stand the heat of course!) and it's super-easy to navigate.  Besides, if you get lost, a friendly Athenian will take you by the arm and walk you all the way to wherever you want to go.  They'd probably do this even if you wanted to go to Turkey.  They are that lovely in Greece.

The Acropolis

We flew out at a pretty civilized time on the Wednesday evening and arrived in Athens at about midnight, so Wednesday was all about falling straight to sleep!  We'd agreed to have breakfast in the hotel on Thursday morning to make life easier, so we all met up about 09:30 (leaving enough time for me to run first).  My pre-breakfast run was lovely!  I had already planned to go to the Panathenaic Stadium at some point during my stay, but I didn't want it to be the first day when I was tired.  Therefore, I just ran up to the stadium and back; a nice 5km run which led me up a main street at first, but then once I got past the government buildings I could divert into a cool park which was properly shaded.  It was lovely in there, but also - being Greece - was completely random, with a tiny zoo in the middle and costumed guards wandering through from time to time.  By the time I emerged back out onto the road on the other side, I was completely mentally back in Greece and ready for anything!

Temple of Olympian Zeus

This was good, because the first thing I saw was the changing of the guard outside the Presidential Palace!  This isn't like Buckingham Palace, where the guards are enclosed behind a fence.  It just takes place right in the street, and people, dogs, tourists and cars who are passing can wander through in the middle of it whenever they feel like it.  The guards themselves are fabulous - FABULOUS!  They are called the Evzones, which is a particular unit of the Hellenic Army.  They are symbols of bravery and courage for the Greek people, but their duties are of a ceremonial nature now only.  Since by the time the guards change, they have been standing immobile for an hour, the steps that they take are extremely slow.  This was originally because it was thought that this would help their circulation and prevent blood clots, but it looks amazing, especially as the ceremonial outfit is fantastic - it is based on the uniform of two groups of Greek warriors during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans in the 1820s, and it is extremely gorgeous. The guards are also chosen according to their height, excellent physical condition and psychological state, and due to their fine character and morality.  I was totally honored to get to see the changing of the guard so unexpectedly.  I also graded them marks out of 10 for the most excellent physical condition.  I wouldn't want them slacking on that physical condition ...

Athens

After that I turned around and headed back to the hotel, meeting up with the others at the appointed time.  According to the forecast, this was going to be our coolest day in Athens, so we thought we'd take advantage of it to see as much as we could.  Accordingly, we started by visiting the Panathenaic Stadium first (more about that later), and then heading to the Temple of Olympian Zeus.  The way that the ancient attractions work in Greece is that you buy a little booklet tickets for 12 Euro, which gives you admittance to six ancient attractions of your choice.  Each time you attend an attraction, one of the tickets gets ripped out of your booklet so that you can keep going til you've got none left.  It's a brilliant system because it saves queuing up at each attraction, and it's such a total bargain that even if you don't use all your tickets you've still hardly spent anything.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

The Temple of Olympian Zeus is magnificent!  It's a huge ruin right in the middle of Athens which was dedicated to - funnily enough - Zeus.  It was built in about 174 BC and it's absolutely huge.  I can't describe how massive it is - it doesn't even look that big til you're in it, and then you realise that each column is 17 metres or 55 feet in height - it simply dwarfs all the tourists around it.  Unfortunately in Mediaeval times the site was plundered for materials to use for building houses and buildings around Athens, so it is pretty ruined now.  However, fifteen columns are still standing, and a sixteenth still has all its stones, but it's fallen and lies horizontally across the site.  It's really awe-inspiring and definitely worth a visit.

From there, we headed up to the Acropolis.  The Acropolis is really easy to find - you just have to look up at any point in Athens and then head that way!  We just went straight towards it and eventually found ourselves at one of the entrances on Acropolis Hill.  Having sacrificed another ticket, we started wandering up the hill.  We were really excited to say that we'd been to Peripatos, as one of the stones told us ... until we found a number of others all over the hill, also indicating that we were in Peripatos.  After some confusion we finally worked out that it means edge.  As in, of the cliff.  Oops.

Theatre of Dionysus

Putting that behind us, we walked past the Theatre of Dionysus to our left.  This was at the very bottom of the hill and since we'd made it so far up we didn't go down but it was impressive from above.

Then it was up and into the Acropolis itself!  It was the most amazing place ever - it's huge, with the Parthenon dominating the right of it as you come in.  The stones look almost like they're fake - they're the most beautiful yellow, and almost glow in the sun.  You can't get too near to the Parthenon because it's a bit crumbly, but you can certainly get near enough to realise how immense it is.  You can get much nearer to the Temple of Athena on the left (as in, you can go into it) and that is equally stunning, if a little smaller.  We spent ages wandering around, taking photos and generally marvelling at the site as a whole - it was absolutely magnificent.  After about an hour, we left and wandered back down the hill for slushies - perfect in the weather!

The Acropolis

From there, we went off to visit the Ancient Agora, but on the way we found a tiny market selling all kinds of jewelry and touristy things for crazy cheap prices!  Harri and I each got necklaces for a whole 2 Euro.  I'm still trying not to feel guilty ... I can't think that we contributed much to the Greek economy!!

The Stoa

Once we got there, the Agora was - like everything else in Athens - amazing.  It feels like it's almost complete, because your imagination fills in the blanks!  We started off in the Stoa, which now houses a museum showing the building and eventual decay of the Agora.  It's the most beautiful building even now and when you're gazing out through the windows you really feel like nothing has changed since Classical Greek times.  We spent some time with the models there, then wandered out through the grounds to the Temple of Aphrodite in the opposite corner.  Although the grounds are mostly ruined now, the Temple is still complete so that each end of the Ancient Agora are almost intact.  After looking at the Temple from every conceivable angle, we realised that it was late afternoon and we were STARVING and popped out into nearby Monastiraki for lunch.  I love Monastiraki!  It's got a really hippie, vibrant feel to it, with restaurants and traders all over the place, and at all times you can see the Acropolis sitting watch over you.  We had a lovely - and huge - lunch in a tiny restaurant with (of course!) free ouzo to finish.  We then dived into the icecream parlor over the road for the most delicious icecreams!  Athens has the best icecream ... icecream parlors and bakeries.  Yum.

We were pretty shattered after that, so we decided to wander back to the hotel for a quick break before we were going to be heading out that evening.  We were lucky enough to be able to tick off two further major boxes on the way - first, Syntagma Square, which is where all the political rallies tend to take place in Athens, and Plaka, an inner city area of Athens which is was built over the ancient city of Athens.  There are areas of Plaka where the city underneath has been excavated and you can see down into its ruins.  It's really pretty, so it was lovely to be able to walk through it on our way home.

Romy and Harri at Athiri - SO YUM

That evening, we'd thought that we'd go to the Funky Gourmet, a double-Michelin starred restaurant about a 20 minute walk away from our hotel.  We made our way there for 21:00, all dressed up and super-excited about our food!  Unfortunately there was a mix up with our booking (our fault, not the restaurant's) and there was no room for us, but this turned out to be the best thing!  As we were wandering back to our hotel, we stumbled across Athiri ... and all I can say is please please please please please pretty please with sugar on top please go.  It is A.MAZ.ING.  We sat outside in the courtyard and had the most attentive waiters bringing us everthing we could possibly want.  I had the scallops to start and they were soooooo delicious.  I might never forget the scallops ... all our meals were fabulous for all three courses but the starters were particularly good (or perhaps we were just spoilt by the time the mains and puddings came!).  Once we'd stuffed ourselves to capacity, we rolled out and back to the hotel as it was really late by then.

The following day we got up early and caught the metro out to Piraeus, the Athens port.  It's at the end of one of the tube lines so it's super easy to get to, and we made it in good time for our trip over to Aigina, a tiny island off the coast.  I'll write about that separately as technically that is another one of my new places for 2015!

Panathenaic Stadium

The athlete's tunnel to the stadium

Our third day in Athens was also our last full day.  My first thing to do on this day was RUN!  I had been super-excited to discover that before 09:00, you could go and run at the Panathenaic Stadium, which was about 3km away from our hotel.  The Panathenaic Stadium was built for the very first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and is built on the spot where Pheidippides is said to have shuffled off his mortal coil after running from Marathon to deliver the news of the military victory in the Battle of Marathon.  The stadium is all made of marble with a black track, and has fabulous views over Athens, as well as a tiny museum dedicated to the modern Olympics.  I couldn't wait to run there, so I set off really early to try and beat the heat and made it up there for about 07:00.  I wanted to do 10x 400m repeats and then spend some time looking around the actual stadium and museum.  All that for 3 Euro!  The run itself was fun - the track is really long and thin which was a bit weird when I'm used to a modern shaped track. but that kind of made it more interesting.

Medal blocks

Once I was done, I spent ages climbing around the stadium (I don't know what Greek people were built like in 1896 but they apparently loved super-steep, super-shallow steps!!) and admiring the views.  I also went up the shoot to the museum, which is house in what I guess would have been the old changing rooms when it was built.  The museum doesn't have much in it; just posters for all the years of the modern Olympics, but it was lovely seeing them.  It was even nicer coming down the shoot and imagining what it must have been like as an Olympic athlete, emerging from the cool tunnel into the blazing white stadium and the roaring crowds ... so cool.  I've never gotten to do anything like that before and it was super fun.  For a sports geek like me anyway!

Rooftop pool at Melia

Once I got back to the hotel, it was, frankly, boiling.  Fortunately for us, the hotel had a fabulous roof-top pool, so although Tom went off exploring, Romy, Harri and I literally spent the entire day by the pool.  It was perfect - if we fancied being a bit cultural, all we had to do was look up to our left and admire the view of the Acropolis and the Parthenon.  Totally cultural.  Otherwise we could just lie there and enjoy the sun - a rare novelty for anyone English this summer!

It''s quite steep up to Mount Lykavetos ...!

By the time it got to the evening though, Tom, Harri and I were keen to explore a little more.  I'd been wanting to head up Mount Lykavetos the whole time, because I'd read that it was amazing at sunset.  Therefore, Harri and I hauled our carcasses off our sunbeds (Romy wasn't persuaded that climbing up an enormous hill was a great idea in 35*C heat) and met Tom to scramble up the hill.  It was again pretty easy to find (just looking up helps, as it's the highest hill in Athens!).  We fortified ourselves with a carb-loading icecream each, and then headed up the steps ... and more steps ... and more ... and more ... and more ... There were so many steps!!  Eventually we hit half-way up and found ourselves on a road which sloped up for a bit before leading back onto the path and more steps.  I tell ya what, I'm supposed to be the one who's fitness mad but those steps were hard work!  Harri and Tom didn't find them as much of a struggle.  I suspect they've been drinking unicorn blood or something - that level of natural fitness is not normal!

Top of Mount Lykavetos

However, once we got up Lykavetos it was well worth it.  It was absolutely beautiful and we'd timed it perfectly - just before sunset.  There isn't a lot up on the top - just a small church which is filled with Greek Orthodox relics, a bell tower, and a restaurant.  Oh and seven million tourists.  Since we were going out for supper, we skipped the restaurant and just spent our time squeezing people out of the way and taking loads of photos.  It was so beautiful up there, I could've stayed there for hours.  Our stomachs reminded us that we had to collect Romy, however, so we left after an hour or so and picked her up, then we ventured back down through Plaka and to the edge of Monastiraki for supper.  We were in the mood for Greek food since it was our last night ... so chips were the order of the day for me!  No but seriously, Greek chips are amazing.  Worth their own weight in, um, body fat.  I did manage to mix them up with a gyros - sort of like a Greek kebab, with salad, mixed meats, and flatbread.  It is delicious!  It wasn't the best Greek meal I've ever had, but such is life.  One cannot have everything.  It had chips and that was enough.

Another shot at Mount Lykavetos

The fourth day was our last day, but we weren't flying out until the evening.  Therefore, we had the whole day to finish off whatever we fancied.  In truth, we'd done almost everything that we wanted to see on our first full day, and it was also slated to be boiling hot again.  Therefore, Harri and I in particular were keen to get as much done as early as possible and then come back and get the most out of the pool as possible.  The one thing we hadn't been able to see before was the flea market in Monastiraki, because that's only open on a Sunday.  We made our way down there nice and early, but before we got there, we found the one remaining site that we hadn't seen - the Roman Agora!  You can go into the Agora but there's not really much point, because you can see it just as well from outside it.  It's split across a road, so that one part is behind bars and you can see in, and the other part is below street level and you can look over it.  It was like a cross between the Ancient Agora that we'd see a couple of days earlier and the Forum in Rome.  The most exciting bit about it for us was that it had a family of tortoises wandering about in it!  I've seen tortoises a lot in Greece and they're so funny - so ponderous, and completely oblivious to anyone or anything around them.  We watched them making their way across the Roman Agora, then moved on to the flea market.

Me!

I didn't love the flea market, but Romy did!  She spent ages wandering around it, while I found a side street and bought shoes.  One can never have enough shoes, so I bought two pairs.  Harri and I were also super-excited to find that - like in Russia - you could buy Christmas decorations!!  In June!!!  We were so excited about this that the gorgeous shopkeeper decided to give us a decoration each (this is exactly why the Greek economy is failing!!  The Greeks are too nice!).  In Greek/Russian tradition it is now hanging up in my bedroom all year round.

By this time it was almost lunchtime and it was so hot that we decided to spend the rest of the day hanging out by the pool again.  We bought a final icecream for good luck and wandered back to the hotel for a relaxing afternoon topping up our tans and reading.

Athens is 100% my favorite city ever.  Four days was the perfect length of time to stay there - we got to see everything we wanted to see, we got to relax, we got amazing tans, we spent almost nothing (sorry Greece, we tried, but you are insanely cheap), we ate fabulous food, we had delicious icecream and we had the best time.  Obviously I was in great company, but even if I'd been by myself, Athens would be my top 1 city.  I can't wait to go back there!

Sunset