It was a very hilly and pretty island

I love walking there, it seems so quiet and mystical.

Still hate waiting.

Piraeus is supposedly the hotbed of Greek communism

Aegina
 

 
 

Aegina -- Αιγινα


Early to bed, early to rise, eat a quick breakfast and dash madly across the street to catch the bus. That is the Bonney way. Into Piraeus we were headed, to catch a ferry to the island of Aegina, a popular day trip for Athenians weary of the city, and tourists looking for an action-packed day. In the guide book it mentioned two types of ferries: The Dolphins, which got you there in 30min, and the standard one, which took 1 1/2 hours.

 
Beautiful Piraeus...
Piraeus bites. I mean, it really really fricking bites. The port area is really ugly, man. All it is is traffic, buses, concrete, a thousand travel agencies, and newsstands selling pornographic videos. Well, maybe it isn't all bad then, but it still sucks. We got dumped off in some area of the port and right away we were lost. So we walked for a bit until we came to a travel agency. I enquired about ferry prices to/from Crete, and the high quote sent us out the door.

We walked into another travel agency a block away, and asked an the older women there about Crete ferry prices. We got the same high quote, so we said the hell with it, and purchased round-trip tickets to Crete. The boat going there would drop us off in Xania (or Chania, or Cania. Fricking math language), and the boat coming back would leave from Iraklion (or Heraklion, blah blah...) Can I just say again that it is an adventure just trying to find stuff in the index of your guidebook? You have to try to guess which way it was translated into English, and it was never the same between our two guidebooks. But I digress... (a first for my travelogue, I believe. No snickering!)

Since our time on Crete was changing, we asked the lady if she would call our hotel in Crete and extend our stay. It took a while for her to understand what we wanted, but she made the call (in a bit of a huff). Finally asking for directions to the Dolphin ferries so we could get to Aegina quickly, we bid her farewell and headed towards the dock.

When we got to the dock we met a couple of Germans who were also looking for the fast ferries, so we joined up, and saw some ticket booths. A horn sounded, and we saw a bunch of people running toward a large ferry boat, so we checked it out. "Aegina, yes, Aegina! Quickly, on board!" the men on the boat yelled. We yelled back "Dolphin? Dolphin?!" and they said, "Quickly, on board, on board!" So I jumped on board, but the other couple didn't see us, so Lin-Wei ran off after them, yelling for them to come on board. So you have a scene where the boat is seconds from leaving, and an American and three Greek sailors are yelling at a small chinese-american woman to get on the fricking boat, while she is yelling at Germans to do the same. But they kept going, and she had to give up and get on the boat. And when we got on the boat... it wasn't the Dolphin. We saw the Dolphins as we pulled away. Small and sleek, with a shiny red paint job, they looked pretty sweet. We lumbered away, catching a last glimpse of the Germans as they prepared to get their Dolphin tickets...

 
Do you know they way to Aegina?
We were on that boat for about 1 1/2 hours, but it was cool. We kicked back with a coke and about 100 middle-school aged students. They were loud.

Disembarking, we grabbed a quick bite to eat. The guidebook said we could rent a scooter and drive to the island ruins ourselves and risk certain death (I mean, they pretty much said you'd die if you did that), or take the bus. So at the sandwich shop I asked where the bus was, and got blank stares from the woman owner and her husband. I was a little annoyed, because up to this point everyone had spoken English, and I was surprised that the owners of this shop (which was mere meters from the sea, and in the middle of a tourist area) spoke no English. But, what the hell was I thinking. I was in Greece, man. So I played it off legit, and made steering wheel motions while saying, "Bus. Bus....Bus?" Something dawned in her and she called out the window. I took a quick glance at my guidebook for bus translation, and a dude came up to me and said, "Car rental?" No, I replied, I needed the "lehoforio!". So he sent me over to the bus.

I got bus tickets, but that weren't easy either. There were 4 crusty Greek dudes sitting in the small bus ticket house, and they were just talking, ignoring the friendly American outside. I finally broke in with extremely bad Greek and got their attention, and two bus tickets.

 
Second day in Greece, and these are
starting to all look the same
The ride to the Temple of Aphaia wound through some mountains roads, but it wasn't too bad. We got there, bought our tickets, and toured the site. We asked about when the bus returned, but didn't get a good answer. When we were almost done touring, we saw the bus come back to the site heading back to the port, but we weren't done yet, and I dawdled. This was to prove extremely unfortunate, because when we exited the ruins, we were told that the next bus wouldn't be by for two hours.

Dammit.

So we toured the site some more. And we sat. We looked out at a beautiful view... for an hour. Then the view started to suck. We met a dude from Sweden and talked to him for a bit, took pictures, and looked longingly as he rode his scooter back to town. We hung out by some parked cars, hoping some other tourists might take us back, but no luck.

 
Sure it's pretty...for the first hour
Across from the ruins was a snack shop, and we went down there to sit at the tables and get some shade. Lin-Wei went off to the bathroom, and I pulled out our remaining coke from lunch. As I was drinking it, an ancient woman came out of the shop and stood over me. When I looked up, she launched into a tirade in math that went something like this, "∑i=0 xi * x/y-7 coca-cola! Pah! 4/3πr2 - ∞". I pointed to the exit and said, meekly, "Leave?". "Neh!" was the reply. That means, yes, you damn American, get the hell out of here. So I got the hell out of there.

 
The Paleohora
Finally the bus came back, and we took it half-way back to town. We got off by this pretty cool church, because the guide book said we should check out the Paleohora, a hill upon which there were dozens of small churches. That turned out to be pretty cool. We hiked up a huge hill (rather hot by this point) and poked our heads into a bunch of old churches perched on the hill. You could really feel the history there.

Hiking back down, we had another long-ass wait for the bus, but this time we were in a little covered room, so we kicked it.

Getting back we figured we'd take the Dolphin, but the slow ferry was leaving in 5min, so we hopped on that. Once back in Piraeus, we spent as little time as possible there, taking the subway to the local tram. The tram got us back to Glyfada, where we enjoyed a nice sushi meal. We got supplies for the next couple of days, and back at the hotel I emailed our Crete hotels to confirm the change, booked a room in Iraklion, and we called it a night.

That night the kids that were on the ferry with us must have been staying at our hotel, because they were really loud, well into the night. I really felt like an old man, then. I just wanted them to shut up. But we got to sleep eventually.