More Aegina

We didn't get much time at the museum or in the ancient town of Kolona because it closed at 3:00! We were a little puzzled at the early closing and decided to walk through the harbor to other side of town.

We walked along the harbor, looking at the boats and yachts, and the eateries on the other side of the road. At the end of the harbor we found a beach. We sat under these palm trees on a park bench and enjoyed the breeze
.






Little fishes swimming in the harbor



I found this sea urchin on the beach. You are safe to swim in Greek waters. No sharks will get you but you have to be aware of sea urchins. Their spines break off in the sand and if you step on one and get it embedded, it will get infected. We brought aqua socks so we could walk freely.



Have I told you about the cats yet? There are lots of cats on all the Greek islands! They are like pigeons or mice. They are only rarely pets. They work hard to make a living. This one just stopped, curled up and took a nap on the beach, right by the water!



When I went to check out a little building that turned out to the Union Hall for the Fishermen, I found that someone had created a little sculpture of a head in the corner. I felt like I had discovered the real Greece: when faced with repair, sculpt a goddess!

Aegina, Temple of Apollo

After we found our room and we ate, we thought we'd go shopping. But it wasn't to be. All the shops except for the eateries at the harbor were closed! I thought maybe we waited too long and they all closed for the season.

We decided to sight see instead. Only a few blocks away from the harbor is the remains of the Temple of Apollo and the ancient town of Kolona. The temple of Apollo was built in the 6th century BC.


Remains of Kolona

The last column left of the Temple of Apollo


The attached museum had a reconstructed Amphora jug that was over 6 feet high. Here is one that is half buried in the ancient town on Kolona. These amphora come to a point at the bottom and so they can't stand up. The do have "ears" with holes. Smaller amphora were meant to be suspended from the ceiling and then you could tip them over and pour out the wine. They are not sure what these huge amphora held but they do know that the jug was made in the room they found it in.


The museum, temple and town are right next to the see and have the prettiest palm trees.



As we made our way back to town I just had to shoot some pictures of the horse cabs and boats-

The Island of Aegina (or paradise to you and me)

I'm sitting on the veranda of our bed and breakfast, sipping a frappe, and wondering why we haven't all moved to Aegina?

Really, this is heaven! Aegina is a small island in the Aegean Sea below Athens. It is the largest island we will stay on though. Its a 1.5 hour ferry ride that only costs about $9. Aegina has many excellent things: shopping, old churches, old archeological digs, museums, beaches, and food.

First, a word about our plans. We have none! We plan to stay on islands as long as it is fun and move on when the honeymoon is over or becomes too expensive. We didn't plan to stay at fancy accommodations. In fact, if all went wrong, I'm prepared to sleep rough on a beach!

Second, a word about safety. Good old Rick Steves is always going on about pickpockets, making you scared and ruining the fun of travel. However, he does say that you should roll with it in Greece. Be careful, but not too careful. I agree. We missed out on getting our tickets to Aegina quickly and wandered around a bit on the pier because we were too safe.

You see there are many sellers of ferry tickets to the various islands and they all approach you something like this on the sidewalk: "Psst, lady.... you want ferry tickets? I get them for you. Only $7 euros. Special for you. Why you clutching bag? Really, just come in to my lair, em, business. Lady, that your husband?" and then yells in Greek, back to someone I can't see, yelling "Guido, his head looks hard! Make sure you use the extra heavy sap."

No, I don't speak Greek, but I was sure that was what he was saying. Turns out I could have saved a bit of time and sweat by taking him up on his offer. You see, the prices are fixed in Greece and he could not have charged me any more and he would have made sure we got on the right ferry (which we did anyway but we were a lot more sweaty).

Once off the ferry, we walked around, trying to find accommodations. The little town of Aegina is nestled against a working harbor and is a maze of cute streets. Since we are at the end of the season, there are no tourist maps to be found. Its noon and its hot and more than a little humid. I wondered if we would find a room, when we turned a corner and found this-


I walked in the front door and asked Ms. Rina, the proprietor, if she had a room we could stay in and how much. She said "My dear! You don't want to know how much the room is! You must seeeee it first! Come with me." She showed me around this wonderful 200 year old home. There is a suite that still has the old Venetian painted ceilings.



And this is where the frappe comes in...


This is the back common area. Our room is the farthest on the right.


The front entrance and outside common area-



Side view of the front entrance-


Heaven!

Athens, Pireaus port

Rick Steves, travel guru, says you only need one day to look around Athens and then get out! He is quite right but more on that later. We decided to look around Athens on our return trip and get out to the islands first.

We decided to see three Greek Island: Aegina, Poros, and Hydra (pronounced Id-dra). We choose these because they were close by Athens by ferry and they were not islands that most tourist choose. They are island that Greeks go to when they go on vacation. We also are going at the end of the season. We risk that many shops and places to stay are closed. Weather-wise, it is lovely, less humid, warm and still sun-kissed.

Syntagma Square is the center of the new subway hub of Athens and is the easiest way to get to the port to take a ferry. We hop on a train bound for Pireaus and see glimpses of the Acropolis and the Temple of Diana. However, I couldn't get good pics from the train. Here is a picture of the apartment balconies. They look a little French and then you can see bits of the Mediterranean.



This is the train station at the port.





Interesting iron work.






And this is me on the ferry watching the scenery!



The shades of blue and aqua are not adequately shown in this picture! The camera cannot catch the amazing colors our eyes can see. I will spend most of the trip unsuccessfully attempting to catch the colors of aqua and turquoise I see.



Aegina in the distance

Athens, Take I

So, we successfully completed our short journey to Paris and got back to Charles de Gaulle airport in time for our flight to Greece. It was weird that we didn't have to go through customs since we were already in an EU country.

And by the way, I noticed that all American airlines (all of them, not the one named that) are really wound up about safety. When we went to Europe last year and this year, I noticed that nobody else in the world gets so nuts about take off and landing and being buckled in, tray up, and seat back up, as us. About 10 minutes before landing in Europe, they announce "Oh, by the way, we're about to land and you might want to buckle up, put up your tray, sit up straighter, and keep your wine from falling over. No fuss though, just saying."

So, now for the real challenge: in our sleep deprived state, get off airplane, find the bus going to Syntagma square (sounds like Sin-tog-wa), stay awake for one hour, get off, avoid pickpockets, find our hotel, and get a room without bedbugs. Easy peasy.

Why is it that all foreign bus drivers seek to channel the spirit of race car driver, Mario Andretti? Our Greek driver was no different. I was surprised I had muscle strength to hang on and stay in my seat. I thought that it was overkill for Rick Steves to suggest that we watch out for pickpockets at 1 AM in Syntagma Square. Turns out he's mostly right, there were people everywhere! It turns out the Greeks, and their tourists, hardly sleep! One AM is just getting warmed up! More about that in later posts.

Fortunately, we spy our hotel sign across the Square in record time. No pickpockets either. The manager on duty was very nice. I know it was his job to be nice but I've found uniformly that Greek people are very pleasant people.

Next challenge, room without bedbugs. Not that Greece is chock-a-block with bedbugs. Its just that there is a world-wide explosion of them and they are not as easy to defeat as our Great, great grandmother did. I have a house full of carpet and it would be a nightmare.

So, sad news. I found indications that our room had bedbugs. As I'm trying to remember how my great great grandmother dodged that bullet when she first pulled in to old Yakima (Union Gap now), my wonderful husband cudgels together some tired brain cells and says "The ashtray, Terri!"

You see, he booked a non-smoking room. Even though it doesn't smell like smoke at all, the room shouldn't have an ashtray! I called the front desk and easily got our room changed and that room on a different floor did not have bedbugs!

Lovely, a restful sleep free from worry and bites.

More pictures of Paris

Here are a few more pictures of Paris. Some are from our last trip. The first two pictures are from a building on the Champs-Élysées. Each of the "holes" depict a Greek or Roman god like Bacchus.




This is a small Arch that we found by accident. It is clearly very old. "By accident" means we were just wandering around, slightly lost.




Possibly a consulate building-


I took this at night on our last trip.



We've been walking for 6 hours and I'm jealous that the Parisian mannequin gets to sit down and I don't!

Paris!

I know I'm about to say something that is practically heresy: Paris is a bit of a let down.



I know, I know... how could I think the City of Lights, a lovely romantic city like Paris is anything but great? The problem with Paris is that you spend more time below it than on top of it! We use the Metro to get around and I find we spend most of our time in the subway rather than enjoying Paris. When you are on top, it is breathtaking beautiful. The buildings are lovely. The people are well dressed. The shops full of interesting foods and goods like these lovely scallops in a fish shop.



The subways are extensive, large, humid, and a little dangerous feeling. There are always buskers. You think you have safely gotten on the right train, only to have a team of accordion players and their amplifier, hop on the train and start playing and asking for money.

I love the tall, tall doors in Paris.



The flower shops



The chocolates!!!

Travel Day

We knew when we designed our trip that the travel days would be the most difficult. They always are difficult but this trip would be more challenging than usual because of the elements we can't control and a few we decided to take on.

Our flight to Greece was in two legs: 10 hours to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and a 10 hour lay-over; and a 4 hour flight to Greece. We would live that day basically twice. We would spend 10 hours in the air and when we land, we will go to Paris on the train and spend 9 hours, that we would normally be sleeping, looking around. We'll get back on a plane, land in Greece at 12 midnight, and take a 1 hour bus ride in to Athens so we can stay in a cheaper hotel. The only hotel near the airport is $280 a night, which is too steep for us. We only need one night because we will hop on a ferry, bound for an island, first thing in the morning.

We thought, and we were correct, that both France and Greece had a strike the day before so we knew we would be safe to travel.

Greece!

So, I'm going to blog about my trip to Greece. I realize that my only fan is my mom. Hi Mom! I hope you enjoy this.

We decided to go to Greece. I have wanted to go to Greece since my first quarter at YVCC when I took a class on Greek history. That professor was very interesting and he led a yearly trip to Greece. I just couldn't afford it then.

The decision to make this trip was very difficult. This year is the 17th anniversary of my Father-in-law's death. Because my husband is the first born in a Japanese family, we should have gone back to Japan and participated in the ceremony. One problem: the dollar is historically low against the yen. It would be very expensive.

However, Greece is practically completely broke and it is cheaper to go there. That didn't make the decision any easier: France, where we would have a stop over both before and after, is having transportation strikes; and Greece is also having transportation and public employee (think museums) strikes. To top it off, the US issued a strong travel alert about possible terrorist activity in Europe!

I've been working on putting on a big fundraising event at work and now that it is over, I really need a break. So, we're going to brave all the strikes and go to the Greek Islands, with no plan other than to live like the Greek.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

It's snowing hard in the Puget Sound area! My boxwood standards have turned into snow topiary



I feed the birds and this greedy little fellow sat in the tree scolding me as a cleared the snow. As soon as I went in, he swooped in and ate up as many peanuts as he could manage!

I Got a Job!

I received this fortune after eating dim sum with my husband and it has come true! I start Dec. 1st at a state-wide non-profit as a development manager.

The Bad Blogger Returns!

I'm finally back to blogging. Sorry about such a long hiatus but I just couldn't seem to write anything. I was, however, busy!

I promised my former boss a quilt for the birth of her grandson. However, his birth came and went and no quilt! I had made one for a friend so I couldn't figure out why I was having such trouble. It finally occurred to me that I get a color theme in my head and then I start collecting fabric for the scheme. I realized it took 5 years for me to collect the fabric for her quilt. Since my boss' quilt is of a color scheme I've never worked with before, it would take me 5 years to collect enough fabric for the quilt!!! Plus, I'm a rotten quilter.

What does still inspire me is hats! So I made him a hat and his grandma a matching one so they could wear them together. Here's the boy's hat. Its made of grey denim of a light weight. It looks more "weavy" than it really is.

Here is the inside band.

Of course the hat is reversible and I love that it takes on a "porkpie" hat look. In fact, I may lower the brims of this hat in the future to actually be a porkpie hat. The zebra fabric is a Jennifer Paganelli Sis Boom print.

Here's Grandma's and grandson's hats together-