Athens, Greece Day 3

Today, Luke and I got a little more adventurous. We had talked to Despina (our Athens Walking Tour Guide) about how to catch a ferry to one of the islands. Our cab driver had told us to go to Poros; Despina hated this idea, and suggested we try Aegina instead. She said it’s much bigger and very beautiful. We had spent half a day with her, so we trusted her opinion and went for it. We followed her directions on the tram system to Piraeus (the port) where we boarded a ferry and took that to Aegina. The ferry was huge – not the typical ferries that you think of when you hear the word “ferry” or at least not what I think of. The boat ride took us an hour, but it was well worth it. The island was very nice, a much slower pace from the hustle and bustle of Athens. We walked around the island/marina area. We thought it was neat there were boats that were docked there from the United States and all over the world for that matter, but we liked the boats from the States the best.  After walking around for awhile we decided to grab a late lunch at a café’ right on the water, it was very tranquil. I decided to be brave and order outside of my standard (which has been some form of chicken/rice/veggies) and ordered the fried shrimp. Let me just say – HUGE MISTAKE. The shrimp platter came to me and it smelled delicious but ew…the shrimps had eyes that were looking at me! Not to mention feet and tails still attached, definitely not what I am used to. I didn’t eat one, after seeing the eyes looking back at me, I just couldn’t do it. We laid on the beach for an hour or so, and decided to head back to the main land. Our boat ride back to Athens was a bit different from our boat ride there; we rode back in what’s called a hydrofoil.
It takes half the time of the ferry since it gets out of the water, it was definitely a lot nicer.
When we got back to Athens we, of course, got some gelato and headed back to our hotel room to rest a bit before heading out for dinner. People in Athens don’t really eat dinner until well after 8:00 p.m. We went to the restaurant around 7:30 and we were the first and only patrons for quite some time (we even beat the chef to work). They had a great special though! 10 Euro’s for a Greek salad, pizza, and a glass of wine, and it was called the Smile Café’. The Greek salad was by far my favorite, it was so good. We have been noticing the produce, tomatoes especially, are delicious over here. It was cut up cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, olives (blech, I gave mine to Luke) with a slice of feta on top with oregano and olive oil. So good! I will need to try and make that when we get back. We sat at the café and just enjoyed people watching and talking, afterwards we decided to walk back to our hotel through the Plaka area one more time. It’s really neat because you can see the Acropolis lit up on top of a huge hill from the Plaka area. On our walk back to the hotel we passed by the Athens Sports Bar with a sign for the USA vs. Ghana football/soccer game at 21:30. It was only 45 minutes away so we decided to grab a seat and see what that was like. The bar turned out to be an expats bar, and everyone spoke English. It got really crowded as game time approached and it turned out to be a lot of fun. We even met 3 people that graduated from University of Dayton, such a small world. We sat next to an interesting couple from Wisconsin – I could obviously relate since I traveled to Milwaukee for 2 years of my life. They knew both hospitals I used to work at and they currently live in Buffalo, New York. He teaches Greek History/Mythology at the University and she is a Biologist. They were a lot of fun and we definitely enjoyed talking to them, we also met their friend James, who is an archaeologist and has been in Greece for awhile now digging up ruins. It was a great night; we stayed out way too late to be up at 5:45 a.m. to catch our flight to Dubrovnik. We got back to the hotel around 2:00 a.m. packed out clothes and asked for a 5:30 a.m. wake up call…ouch!