When we got off the boat, all eight of us, without accommodations because the Athens Centre's preferred location was booked with a wedding, we quickly met a young man representing the local booking agency, and he showed us a cheap hotel that the kids quickly accepted, but we declined. We got the name of a nicer place just a little ways up the road, took a taxi there (although it was close enough to walk and we did so several times), and loved it. Unfortunately, they had a baptism party scheduled, and the proprietor warned us that it would be noisy. But since it was a baptism party, it wouldn't go very late, "only one or two." We checked out a couple of other nearby hotels, but decided on the Hotel Danae and taking our chances on the noise. The weather would determine whether the party would be outside or in, outside being right outside our window in the pool area.
Luckily for our sleep later that night, a big storm blew in. But unluckily for our afternoon plans, we were driven out of the water at the beach we all went to by the lightning. (We did not mind the rain--it was all warm.) There was a wild baptism party at the beach bar were we were swimming, and they gave us drinks and invited us to join in, but the whole party was rained out by the force of the storm. Nevertheless, a couple of the students realized that a baptism party might not be a bad place to hang out, and later that night, after dinner, they returned with us to our hotel, and were up dancing and partying with the locals until somewhat past "one or two." As I said, we pretty much slept through it.
But wait, back up. After we were driven by the storm back to our hotel and warm showers, it cleared up again. And nothing was going to keep Annabel out of the water. Here is a picture from our hotel room with Annabel in the pool (after swimming in the ocean, being rained out, returning, showering, and then going out to the pool), and another of Annabel swimming in the ocean again right below our hotel, with the ruins of ancient Aegina in the background.
The main town on the island has the same name as the island, which I'm romanizing (probably incorrectly) as Aegina, pronounced EGG-een-ah. It's been a town since neolithic times, and the excavation and accompanying museum are absolutely amazing. For some reason it's referred to in guidebooks and maps as the Temple of Apollo, but it's so much more than that--in fact, I could hardly find the actual temple to Apollo in the layers of time and space. I'm sorry for not taking a good picture down into the excavations, but here is a picture of Annabel the next morning up by the Byzantine stela, and a view looking back toward our hotel (where Annabel was previously seen in the water).
After most of us toured the site and museum, and the two who had been up late took a healthful morning dip in the ocean at the city beach just outside the gates of the archaeological site, we took two taxis most of the way across the island to the amazing temple of Afea, a pre-Hellenic fertility goddess whose site hosted later temples to various Greek gods. What you're seeing in the pictures is Greek construction, and forms a line-of-site (on a clear day, before modern levels of air pollution) isosceles triangle with the Parthenon and the temple of Poseidon at the end of the Attic peninsula. Supposedly the Parthenon was modeled on this temple, and this one is better preserved (not having been caught in the middle of twentieth-century warfare). After too little time at this amazing hilltop site (being crowded by the infrequent transit schedule), we caught a bus down to the nearby town of Agia Marina, and spent a beautiful afternoon at the beach and in the overlooking taverna. Here are a few pictures of Afea, and a couple of some students in Agia Marina, where the food was good and the snorkeling was wonderful.
We caught what turned out to be a kind of local ferry from Agia Marina, which made another stop on the island that we weren't expecting, but then steamed across to Piraeus, and after changing once in a packed metro station (at which someone getting off the train before ours was robbed) and making the now-familar fifteen-minute walk from the central square, we were safe at home, exactly three hours after getting on the ferry.
The first two days of class went well, and tomorrow we go to the Acropolis, led by our Monuments of Ancient Greece teacher. Our wonderful Greek language teacher has given us a fabulous head start on Greek after only two classes, vastly more and more useful information than I got in a whole summer of lessons with Rosetta Stone Greek, and we are busily reading signs and trying out our Greek on waiters everywhere.
Some will say there were too many pictures of ships in this report, and others, too many pictures of water, and still others, too many pictures of Annabel in the water with ships nearby. But you are all wrong. And to prove it, I will give you more pictures of ships, and Annabel, and water, and more ruins to boot. Such was our weekend. And if you raise your voice in protest, we will say that you are not arguing, you are merely being Greek.
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