Biking through Agistri and visiting Athens

  Aegina, Saronic Gulf Islands, Greece
Monday, September 29, 2008

Our second day in Agistri was a lot of fun! We wanted to rent mopeds but i guess you need a licensee for that. Lame. We rented mountain bikes instead for 5 Euro for the entire day! We wanted to ride all the way around the island, check out the other beaches and take some nice pictures. They didn't have a map for us and a guy at the hotel assured us the island was too small to get lost on. What he didn't tell us was that we would have a lot of up hill treks.
We rode through Scala, the area where our hotel was. It was a cute little neighborhood with lots of taverns and cute little houses and studios. We also rode by a little elementary school which i was kind of surprised to see! Then we got out to the country roads and had some hard times getting up all the hills. We finally came to a little side path with a sign pointing towards a beach and it was ALL down hill so we obviously took it. What we didn't think about was that we would have to get back up. It turned out to be a GORGEOUS beach that we hung out at for a bit.

me at the beach

Then we had to WALK our bikes up a dirt path that winded all the way up the mountain. It took us all the way to the top. I really don't think we could have gotten higher up. After about an hour of walking our bikes up hill we stopped for some pictures of the amazing view. I guess it was kinda worth it. Then we found a REAL road that took us to another town called Limonera where we stopped for lunch.
We did some exploring around there and found a diver man who was going spear fishing in the sea. I was fascinated and kept asking him random questions. He had this really cool wet suit on that was like camouflage for the water. We watched him set up and then send him off with a friendly wave. He was fishing for sea bass and grouper. He also had a little bouey with a flag on it that floated behind him so he won't get hit by a boat.

looking out

After some more exploring and some wrong turns that led us uphill again we decided we would make our way back to the hotel. Of course it wasn't that easy. As we were about to make or final up hill ride to get to the downhill road that would take us home Jared's chain on his bike broke in half. We sat there for a while trying to fix it. Megan and Shira walked down to the taverns where we had lunch to call the guy we rented from and they ended up brining us a whole new bike. After winding up one more hill we had a nice long ride down hill back to Scala. It was a LOT of fun. The long day of biking really took a lot out of us so of COURSE we took a nice little siesta before dinner. We ate at another taverna with cats and then hung out in the hotel for a while and went to bed.

amazing

Our last day in Agistri was a little chilly for beaching so we went to the place where we did Kareokee and had some waffles for breakfast. It is really a dessert there but we convinced them that it was necessary for us to have them for breakfast. Me being the boring person that i am just wanted butter and maple syrup on it. To make it easy i asked for it all on the side. When they brought it out they gave me the butter but didn't have syrup. I asked the girl who brought the food out if i could get some maple syrup (which WAS on the menu). She seemed to know what i was talking about until she came out with more butter. Then i pointed to Megans waffle that had syrup and walnuts on it and said "no syrup" like that. 2 minutes later she brought me a plate of walnuts. Of course our english speaking server was MIA so this girl was all i had. So i just smiled and said "thank you." I did eventually get some syrup but the waffle was mostly gone and what remained was cold. So it wasnt quite the waffle experience that i had hoped for.
After breakfast we walked down to the port and took the ferry back to Athens. It arrived around 3 and our train home wasn't until midnight so we had lots of time to go exploring in Athens. I was really excited because we got to spend the day with Danika, my friend from Albion who i missed a lot. Her place in Athens was really nice and her roomates seemed like a lot of fun. She took us to the market in Monastiraki, then we walked through the Queen's gardens to the President of Greece's house. There were these really cool guards outside that do this funny dance looking think. Dano said she gets to walk by them everyday and she thinks they know who she is cause she said hi and smiles everyday but of course they cant speak or look at her. We kept walking and got to see the original olympic stadium which just happend to be right by Danika's school!

looks like its from a book doesnt it? :)

Yeah she gets to see that everyday. There was also a really amazing view of the Acroplis. It was so funny just walking through the city and in between buildings you can just look up "oh hey there's the Acroplis" thats fine. It was a fun day and I really didn't want to get back on the train for 7 hours. All 5 of us got to sit together this time though so that was good. It is just really hard to get comfortable in those little rooms. Overall it was am excellent weekend and I am SO glad we took advantage of going to the islands while we could.