Aegina!!!

Since we do not have school friday....ever.....we headed out to the island of Aegina on Friday morning. We took this weird looking boat called the flying dolphin for only 10 euro and got to Aegina in about 45 minutes. The island looked exactly how I expected and straight out the movies. At first we fueled up with some frappe and I had some delicious gelato for lunch while everyone else got pastries. We met this really nice British couple who owns a yacht and sails to Aegina often for holiday. What a life. We then found tourist police who offered us a room for 13 euro each. We checked it out and it seemed relatively sanitary and bed bug-free. The room provided us with a "bathroom", questionable cooking facilities and a bed each, yet had marble floors. It is amazing how in Greece, even if a place is a dump, it is still made out of marble because it is such a common natural resource but so expensive to export. Thus, everything in Greece is made of marble.

We then headed to a really nice beach that was a bus ride away and stayed and played in the ever so clear sea all day long. The sea really is as blue as people say. The mountains in the distant were also continuously covered in a haze so as you looked out you felt as if you were still dreaming.

That night we went out to dinner at this taverna right on the edge of the water. Sam's chair was literally sliding down into the sea the whole night. We wanted to be that close haha. I made my first ordering mistake of my trip......the waitress said that the fish on the menu were small, so I took it as small in portion size since everything else is family style. I ordered them and was served a plate full of minos that were fried up. Their guts were exposed and they were fully intact, eyes and all. It was SO GROSS! We had to cover them up with napkins while we ate. I was brave and tried one since I had ordered it but one bit and I felt so queezy the rest of the night. Never order small fish. haha

The next day we took a bus to the temple of Aphaia. She was a daughter of a God and this was the place where she apparently disappeared. It was beautiful and the view from the temple was so expansive that one could just about see Athens. We then took the bus to a gorgeous Greek Orthodox church. It was about five stories high and beyond magnificent. The church provided tourists with wraps so that we could enter even though we were not dressed appropriately. Inside it was even more ornate and impressive. I would become Greek orthodox just to sit inside a church like that for an hour every week.

Right after we left the church it starting raining and then it became a downpour. We got our first glimpse of rainy season. Oh my, cant wait!