Greece! Aegina!
To be completely honest I did not think I would make it to Greece this year. In my head Greece was for a different category of people, people with more money to spend than I. It felt expensive, and an influencer’s paradise. Crystal clear blue water, sail boats on the horizon, mythology scattered about, ruins galore. Greece is also a huge bucket list destination for many, myself included, and I didn’t know if the Greece in my head would live up to the Greece in reality. Mixed expectations to reality can be a real buzz killer.
When we sat down to look at flights and see what we could do with our week of lag time before meeting up with Janine in Romania, Greece was the only place that fit the bill, and aligned on our flights.
We woke up at 3:30am in Georgia for our dreaded 5:30am departure, because “you never know how bad the security line will be.” and we had a rental car to drop off that morning. Well after about a flight a week for 6 months, getting to the airport 2-3 hours early was finally worth it. It took us over an hour to get our boarding passes (Wizz Air sent Ryker on a goosechase though the terminal). (lesson learned from Ryker: make sure to check in online before your flight while flying budget airlines in Europe… this was the first time I forgot to check us in online all year. The result if you don’t check in at least 3 hours before departure they literally charge you $60 USD per person to check in at the airport!!) After which, security flagged both our bags, took my nail clippers, and gave Ryker a stern talking to about the numbers of cables and chargers he was carrying. We walked up and onto our flight with not a minute to spare.
Then after a flight, a train, a ferry, a taxi, and a walk we settled into our very cute accommodation on the Greek Island of Aegina.
Can I just take a break to say how much I LOVE businesses when the business is actively run by its owners and not managed out to a third party. There is nothing I love throwing my money at more, someone seriously needs to fire up a little Claud bot and figure out how to filter hotels and restaurants by owner owned/owner occupied/owner working the front desk. What I find these businesses have in common is a sense of care, of pride, of coziness, they care about your experience and treat you as a human. In a way the walmarts, starbucks, and amazons of the world will never be able to recreate.
This being said, our hotel was run by a lovely mother/daughter/sister combo, who were incredibly kind. Our AC stopped working on the second night and they came and helped while not making us feel like burdens and had a repair guy out the very next morning. No AC for a night was the only problem we encountered in Greece. (We encountered several more AC issues on our travels in Romania and Hungary via AirBnb hosts and they were NOT as kind about it)
We spent our time beaching, tanning, and walking up and down to the temple to pay our respects to Aphaia, but mainly to get our 10K steps in. We found a hidden beach cove just around the corner from the main beach and it was a big upgrade. Blue waters, perfect cooling temperature, white sand, sail boats in the distance but without the bumping music and costs of sunbeds on the main stretch.
Upon one of our many walks and time at the beach we were shocked by the lack of people. I mean it was the peak of peak season, I expected to be fighting tooth and nail for a place to lay my towel on the sand, but we could stroll in at noon to a mostly empty beach. “Maybe it was because it was a weekday?” we thought. But then the weekend rolled around and same same. So we finally sat down and Googled it. Turns out tourists don’t go to Aegina, they flock like moths to a flame to the well known islands of Mykonos, Santorini, and the recently popular Paros. Aegina, situated only an hour away from the shores of Athens, lights up for the locals. Which did explain the massive increase in catamarans the second the clock hit Friday.
Athens!
We with much trepidation left our Aeginan paradise for the graffiti-ed streets of Athens , when in Rome and all that (haha get it??). Strapped down like pack mulls, we were reminded of Hong Kong as we made our way towards our accommodations. After sifting through a very shifty part of town, we rode an ancient elevator to the equivalent of striking gold while traveling: a hotel room that’s exactly as advertised.
After celebrating our good fortune we hit the town. Meaning we walked around and looked at stuff. Indeed there are lots of things to see, pretty buildings, dilapidated buildings, the Acropolis off in the distance.
We discovered a new coffee order: Freddo Espresso, sweetened espresso over ice. Do you know how hard it is to get a European to put ice in coffee? You’d think we were asking them to sacrifice their firstborn, not a cold drink. If you do manage to convince a barista that you did not stutter and do want ice, good luck getting more than a single cube, turning a coffee into a terrible lukewarm monstrosity: the worst of both worlds. So it was a delightful experience to find a properly iced drink on the menu. Especially because Ryker and I had mostly been surviving on instant coffee for the last six months.
Funny thing about traveling in Asia, you can tell by looking at people who’s a local and who’s not. The white people you see in Asia are mainly Australian with a sprinkle of Europeans. After getting to Georgia, the main tourists were Russian. Making Greece the first place this year we’d encountered other Americans en-mass. I had of course read all the rumors online, that American tourists stick out like a sore thumb; loud, obnoxious, leaning on things, only speaking English, lack of geographical understanding, but I didn’t really believe we Americans were that obvious. That was until I was in Athens, I don’t know if being away from the states made our American detector more sensitive or if the type of American who travels to Athens just happened to fit the cookie cutter stereotype, but it was glaringly evident. It was great to see our fellow Americans but also a reminder that losing weight, talking softly, and looking at a map every once and a while is probably a good idea.
Next up:
That was the end of our Greece chapter. Upon reflection I would go back to Aegina a hundred times over, and I would love to explore more Greek islands and in mainland Greece, but I would skip Athens next time. It ranks pretty low on my personal rating of “cities I would like to spend time in for any reason,” with Tbilisi, Sapporo, and Seoul, topping that list.
Then we were off on another airplane this time to Romania to see the one and only mother of Ryker: Janine Corey.