Aegina!!

My trip to Aegina was absolutely amazing!!  I had so much fun and it was almost like a vacation from SAS sightseeing.  Andrea, Lauren, and I took a ferry yesterday at 8:00am from Piraeus to Aegina Town that took a little over an hour.  Then we rode a bus for about 30 min. to go to Agia Marina on the other side of the island.  From our research, Agia Marina was supposed to have better beaches which is why we stayed over there.  We got off the bus when everyone else did and then asked a local where our hotel was.  It was a short walk up a little bit of a hill, and we found out that there was actually a bus stop right in front of the hotel but we weren’t paying attention the first time.  The people at the hotel were really nice and helpful.  We were able to check in right away – Lauren and I were in a triple room (Kaitlyn was meeting us later) and Andrea bought a room for herself.

We all got settled in and then went down to the town for lunch.  We ate at a place called Big Banana (haha I know, but we didn’t even know the name of it until we left).  I had an appetizer of feta cheese cooked with fyllo dough and topped with honey.  It was the same dish they served us in Delphi the day before only much better because it was so fresh.  For lunch I just had a chicken sandwich with eggs, lettuce, and a really good dressing.

We went back to the hotel and decided to check out the huge pool and we ended up staying there the rest of the afternoon.  It was amazing and there was a cool bartender who was talking to us and practically like no one else was there.  It was really relaxing so much fun.  We went inside around 6:00pm and after like 5hrs in the sun I had gotten a pretty bad sunburn.  We all got showered and changed to go to dinner.  While we waited for Kaitlyn to get there we all enjoyed using the free wifi and I even got all of my photos uploaded to Facebook!  Once Kaitlyn got to the hotel she changed and then we went to Andrea’s balcony and tried some Ouzo which is pretty disgusting and tastes like black licorice, but it is a famous Greek thing so we had to try it.

Then we walked back down to the town around 10:00pm for dinner.  We ate at a beautiful restaurant called Kiriakakis that overlooked the water.  We all shared some house wine and appetizers of Greek meatballs and ham and cheese pie.  Both the dishes turned out to be fried but were so good.  I had the swordfish for dinner which wasn’t a normal fillet – it was a circle with the bone still in the middle.  It was interesting and very delicious.  They brought us all complimentary slices of an apple cake dessert thing that wasn’t the best (we think they were trying to get rid of it), but was still good.

Then we headed out for the night and walked around the town until we heard some music and went into a bar called Café Jimmy because it was playing popular music.  It was more of a chill bar rather that one with dancing, but the bartender was great and we asked him for something really good that was different from normal and he brought us these giant drinks with huge pieces of watermelon on them and like 3 umbrellas.  One was green and one was red and he said he just made up the recipe.  The red one even had a lit sparkler thing on it so we took a picture of course.  The drinks were delicious and we were talking to a bunch of the people there then we decided to walk around more in search of a place to dance a little.

We ended up at a place called Zorba’s Castle (ridiculous, I know) that had like dancing inside but there was no one there because it wasn’t a weekend and the locals told us that the island is like a weekend getaway for people so there was nobody out on a Wednesday night.  Some random guys outside the club paid our cover to get in which was cool and then we just hung out there for a while.  We went back to the hotel around 4:00am.  It was a really fun night out in Greece and it was great because we only met Greek people and didn’t see anyone else from SAS the entire time.

Today we woke up at 10:00 am and had our hotel breakfast which wasn’t much but I just had a bowl of cereal.  Then we all changed and went to the beach.  The beach itself wasn’t that nice but it was a sand beach which they didn’t have most places.  We had some lounge chairs and a floating raft that Andrea bought so it was a eally relaxing morning.  We went back to the hotel around 1:00pm and showered and packed everything before taking a taxi back to Aegina Town on the other side of the island.  We were early for our ferry so we grabbed lunch at a cute restaurant near the pier.  We split a bunch of food because we were trying to use up Euros.  We had tzaziki, fried cheese, vine leaves stuffed with rice, and meatballs.  It was all really good and I’m glad I tried some stuff that I probably wouldn’t have in other places.

Our ferry back was the flying dolphin which goes fast so it only took us about 30 min to go back to Piraeus.  Then we walked back to the ship and got there around 4:00pm.  The boarding process took a while because everyone was getting back on ferries from various islands.  But I made it back onto the ship on time after my first travel adventure that I planned for myself!  I am so glad we took the trip because it was a great break from intense sightseeing, lots of fun, and I have great memories from the trip!