Thursday we spent the day on the Greek island of Aegina.
Aegina is about an hour and a half ferry ride off the coast of Athens into the
Mediterranean Sea. Dad is always prepared for vacations and trips and he does a
lot of research before hand, so that we can make it through with as little
glitches as possible. So, thinking ahead, he researched which ferry would take
us to Aegina. He found that a “red ferry” was the right one to take. On the way
to the port, there was a whole line of shops that sold ferry tickets. Let me
tell you something else about the Greeks: they are adamant salesmen. Every shop
we walk past has people outside trying to get you (in broken English) to come
inside and buy something. This line of ferry ticket shops was no different.
This guy wrangled us in by telling us that we should ride their ferry because
they are an “American company.” Like that was supposed to be some sort of selling
point or something. He then proceeded to tell us that he was from Seattle (yeah, right). Anyway, so
he points to a picture of this red ferry they have and said, “yeah, yeah we’ve
got this red one.” So we bought our tickets for a ferry that didn’t leave for
another hour. There was only one red ferry in the harbor (the names of the
ships were all in Greek, so we couldn’t figure out exactly which ferry was supposed
to be ours based on anything other than that it was supposed to be red).
We waited and waited to board the ferry, which was scheduled
to leave at 12:15. It started to get closer and closer to 12:15, and the red
ferry didn’t seem like it was going anywhere anytime soon. Around 12:10, we
decided to get up and walk a little further down the port. I was looking at our
tickets, trying to match the letters to the Greek letters that were on the ships.
The one we were supposed to board was called the A.G. Nektarious. I looked up
and saw a ship that began with “αΓ” (alpha gamma- I recognized gamma thanks to
you, Emily!), which was boarding people and cars and dad and I finally realized
that was our ferry! We ended up boarding about a minute before it was scheduled
to leave.
The view from our seat:
Aegina from the coast of Athens:
On the port of Aegina:
For lunch, we stopped at a seafood café. Every public place
we go, we keep seeing people with the same coffee drink that looks like this:
We asked a couple on the ferry what it was called, and they
told us it was called Nescafe, so I decided to order one at the café at which
we ate lunch. And this is what the waiter brought out:
Turns out what he brought was a Nescafe, and what I needed
to order was a NesFrappe. Ah, I will get one before we leave! I ordered some shrimp
pasta for lunch:
Our waiter did not speak very good English, and after our
meal was over he looked at dad and said, “Coffee for me? Coffee for me? For free?”
We figured he was probably asking if we wanted some coffee from him, on the house. We said no, and a couple of minutes later
he comes out with two glasses of Ouzo, instead. Ouzo is a Greek liquor that
tastes like licorice.
I didn’t really care for it, so I drank half of it and gave
the rest to dad. Next, we rented a scooter, drove down the road a while, and found
a nice little beach to enjoy.
We were about to run out of gas, so we stopped at the
closest gas station we could find. You cannot pay for the gas with a credit
card, but the gas station attendant was nowhere to be found. It appeared that
whoever own the gas station also lived there. We knocked on the door, waited a
while, and were about to give up when a Greek man in shorts and a wife beater
came out of the house, rubbing his eyes. I guess we must have woken him up from
his siesta. Oops. But we were able to get some gas and be on our way.
Our plan was to circle the entire island on the scooter, but
it took much longer than we expected so we had to turn back around and go back
the way we came. By the time we got back to the port area, it was almost time
to catch our ferry back.
Once we got back to Athens, we found a place to eat before
coming back to the room to hit the sack.
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