On our second full day in Athens, we decided to take a boat ride. Like many port cities, there are always plenty of boat excursions. We decide on a day trip to the island of Aegina. We have a normal start to the day: getting up around 8:30 or 9, splashing some water on our face, straightening the hair, throwing some clothes on and hitting the free breakfast before it’s over. It’s a great thing the hotel breakfasts as it can help lazy people like me get out of bed and better enjoy the vacation.
It’s really tough for me to get out of the hotel early. Part of it is the late euro lifestyle. It’s not true of New York or LA, but coming from San Francisco, a jewel of a city for dining… you’d think you would be able to EAT at some of the fantastic restaurants after 9:30pm. It’s a little sad. Anyway, it’s nice that in Europe, especially in southern Europe, that you can eat at 11pm, everywhere, no problem, even later in a lot of places, but, getting to bed late and wanting to sleep till 9. I LOVE sleeping till 9. It’s so decadent.
The picture set starts about here, if you want to flick and read simultaneously.
So, we ate breakfast, showered and hopped on the metro headed for Piraeus, the port town. There’s no break in development from central Athens in most directions for as far as the eye can see. Unsurprisingly, Piraeus was a little dumpy, but then again it is one of the largest European ports. At this point I was like “WE WILL DO NOTHING UNTIL I FIND SUNSCREEN”, so we went on that quest and found some at a dumpy, weird store for 9€. I was already hungry too, with all the food, and vendors everywhere. We next tried to find a boat to Aegina, a close island, about a 45min boat ride, which was of course not straight forward. The guide book lied to us or, the port completely reconfigured itself. We found a ticket place and booked our ticket and had some time to kill so we found a place to get a coffee. While we were sitting, drinking coffee, approximately TWENTY street vendors tried to hock their wares. Any attempt to be polite and say no, no thanks, worsened the situation. It’s too bad that the best thing to do is to just completely ignore them. In Istanbul, I resorted to pretending I was French which seemed to shut them up faster. Once you’re used to it, it’s not too annoying; it’s just humorous.
It was time to find our boat. This port is so huge that even walking around the edge of 1/8th or less of it, is a loooooong walk – something that I like now – the whole walking everywhere, not having a car lifestyle. We walked past a few crazy large boats, one of which had several big trucks and a dozen cars drive right up and in, to get to some island. We find our boat which is a cool, rides up out of the water, type hydrofoil vessel. The ride was pretty fast, and loud, but in route, we saw many other boats from huge cargo freighters to small rickety fishing craft. The weather was nice and we saw a couple dozen other islands on the way; most uninhabited and we finally get to Aegina and its harbor town. Considering we left the hotel around 11, took the metro, wandered around, and then finally took the ferry, it was now almost 3pm and we were going to dine blind! Our books on Athens didn’t cover any of the ones here.
We surveyed about 8 restaurants which were pretty much all in a row, and they were very similar. We chose the one with the most people to ease our concerns. We must have dined for about 2 hours and all of it was terrific. We started with a Greek Salad (of course!). These salads are VERY simple, and if the ingredients are fresh, it’s SOO GOOD: red onion, tomato, feta, cucumber and a touch of: oil, vinegar and maybe a dash of dried oregano. The sum is more than the parts. As we normally do, we ordered a ½ liter of house wine and happily, ordered a plate of fried anchovies. They were cooked perfectly and very tasty. Do not confuse the taste of these with the taste of anchovies from a can. The difference is like night and day, fresh and light v. oily and SALTY. These just taste like non fishy, fresh fish, to simply be eaten whole. (I don’t remember any more but I’m nearly positive we just at the critters whole: head, tail, the works.)
The second course was a swordfish kabob and for me, the Moussala. Yay! Fries! Moussala is some kind of meat (beef or pork, I forget), a layer of skinned eggplant… ah, screw it. It’s Lamb and Eggplant Casserole. I wasn’t sure what’s in it so I looked it up and apparently, it’s Moussaka. I swear it was spelled Moussala on all the menus, and it was on every menu we saw. It was good, as usual, and yay! Fries! The sword fish was great too. Time for more wine!
We finished eating and drinking our wine and just kicking back. It was a great location with a view of the harbor, various sailboats and other vessels coming in and out of the harbor. On the street just in front of us, was a constant flow of scooters of all ages and of all degrees of environmental friendliness. We saw several people, SEVERAL TIMES, just scooting around, trying to pick up chicks, picking people up, dropping them off, etc. It was just hilarious.
After the food had settled we embarked on an EPIC walk, which was just terrific. It was such a cute little island, not overly built up. Lots of cute houses, old and new, many of which I said to Aimee or she said to me: “Oh yeah, nice! We could totally live here!” Lately we’ve been having serious thoughts of just selling our house in San Francisco and just bumming it… early retirement! We’ll see about that. We still might!
Our epic walk was very enjoyable and we were tired, all full up of food and a couple hours of walking. Consult the 2 billion photos I took. Hmm, our return boat isn’t for 45 minutes. OH WOE! WHAT TO DO?! I KNOW! PISTACHIO ICE CREAM AND ESPRESSO! Yeah, great idea! Smashing. Terrific. A great finish to a mini adventure. We returned via hydrofoil and metro and just relaxed and caught up with friends while uploading and commenting on the 5 billion pictures I took.
-Dennis
It’s really tough for me to get out of the hotel early. Part of it is the late euro lifestyle. It’s not true of New York or LA, but coming from San Francisco, a jewel of a city for dining… you’d think you would be able to EAT at some of the fantastic restaurants after 9:30pm. It’s a little sad. Anyway, it’s nice that in Europe, especially in southern Europe, that you can eat at 11pm, everywhere, no problem, even later in a lot of places, but, getting to bed late and wanting to sleep till 9. I LOVE sleeping till 9. It’s so decadent.
The picture set starts about here, if you want to flick and read simultaneously.
So, we ate breakfast, showered and hopped on the metro headed for Piraeus, the port town. There’s no break in development from central Athens in most directions for as far as the eye can see. Unsurprisingly, Piraeus was a little dumpy, but then again it is one of the largest European ports. At this point I was like “WE WILL DO NOTHING UNTIL I FIND SUNSCREEN”, so we went on that quest and found some at a dumpy, weird store for 9€. I was already hungry too, with all the food, and vendors everywhere. We next tried to find a boat to Aegina, a close island, about a 45min boat ride, which was of course not straight forward. The guide book lied to us or, the port completely reconfigured itself. We found a ticket place and booked our ticket and had some time to kill so we found a place to get a coffee. While we were sitting, drinking coffee, approximately TWENTY street vendors tried to hock their wares. Any attempt to be polite and say no, no thanks, worsened the situation. It’s too bad that the best thing to do is to just completely ignore them. In Istanbul, I resorted to pretending I was French which seemed to shut them up faster. Once you’re used to it, it’s not too annoying; it’s just humorous.
It was time to find our boat. This port is so huge that even walking around the edge of 1/8th or less of it, is a loooooong walk – something that I like now – the whole walking everywhere, not having a car lifestyle. We walked past a few crazy large boats, one of which had several big trucks and a dozen cars drive right up and in, to get to some island. We find our boat which is a cool, rides up out of the water, type hydrofoil vessel. The ride was pretty fast, and loud, but in route, we saw many other boats from huge cargo freighters to small rickety fishing craft. The weather was nice and we saw a couple dozen other islands on the way; most uninhabited and we finally get to Aegina and its harbor town. Considering we left the hotel around 11, took the metro, wandered around, and then finally took the ferry, it was now almost 3pm and we were going to dine blind! Our books on Athens didn’t cover any of the ones here.
We surveyed about 8 restaurants which were pretty much all in a row, and they were very similar. We chose the one with the most people to ease our concerns. We must have dined for about 2 hours and all of it was terrific. We started with a Greek Salad (of course!). These salads are VERY simple, and if the ingredients are fresh, it’s SOO GOOD: red onion, tomato, feta, cucumber and a touch of: oil, vinegar and maybe a dash of dried oregano. The sum is more than the parts. As we normally do, we ordered a ½ liter of house wine and happily, ordered a plate of fried anchovies. They were cooked perfectly and very tasty. Do not confuse the taste of these with the taste of anchovies from a can. The difference is like night and day, fresh and light v. oily and SALTY. These just taste like non fishy, fresh fish, to simply be eaten whole. (I don’t remember any more but I’m nearly positive we just at the critters whole: head, tail, the works.)
The second course was a swordfish kabob and for me, the Moussala. Yay! Fries! Moussala is some kind of meat (beef or pork, I forget), a layer of skinned eggplant… ah, screw it. It’s Lamb and Eggplant Casserole. I wasn’t sure what’s in it so I looked it up and apparently, it’s Moussaka. I swear it was spelled Moussala on all the menus, and it was on every menu we saw. It was good, as usual, and yay! Fries! The sword fish was great too. Time for more wine!
We finished eating and drinking our wine and just kicking back. It was a great location with a view of the harbor, various sailboats and other vessels coming in and out of the harbor. On the street just in front of us, was a constant flow of scooters of all ages and of all degrees of environmental friendliness. We saw several people, SEVERAL TIMES, just scooting around, trying to pick up chicks, picking people up, dropping them off, etc. It was just hilarious.
After the food had settled we embarked on an EPIC walk, which was just terrific. It was such a cute little island, not overly built up. Lots of cute houses, old and new, many of which I said to Aimee or she said to me: “Oh yeah, nice! We could totally live here!” Lately we’ve been having serious thoughts of just selling our house in San Francisco and just bumming it… early retirement! We’ll see about that. We still might!
Our epic walk was very enjoyable and we were tired, all full up of food and a couple hours of walking. Consult the 2 billion photos I took. Hmm, our return boat isn’t for 45 minutes. OH WOE! WHAT TO DO?! I KNOW! PISTACHIO ICE CREAM AND ESPRESSO! Yeah, great idea! Smashing. Terrific. A great finish to a mini adventure. We returned via hydrofoil and metro and just relaxed and caught up with friends while uploading and commenting on the 5 billion pictures I took.
-Dennis
See our photos on Flickr!
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