24.9.08

The past few days

20/09/08
The Past Few Days: Aegina to Paros
Last weekend the group stayed at the island of Aegina. While we were there we saw the temple of Aphaia which is very well preserved and one of the coolest things I have seen since being here. What made it even more interesting is that Aegina is the only place where Aphaia was worshiped. The beaches there were nice and the hotel we stayed at had a salt-water pool which was also nice. Something of interest to me is the fact that there was no running fresh water on the island. This included showers and tap water. I unfortunately learned this very late in the night when everything around was closed and had no bottled water. So, I had to call people who were still in town to bring me back fresh water. I guess we live and learn, so if you are traveling to most islands in the sea in general then I suggest stocking up on some water for the night. It was nice to get out of Athens for a while and be on an island.
Classes were getting a little tiresome without any books back in Athens but they arrived on Tuesday and everyone was happy. Being in Athens for that week in classes was building up a lot of anticipation because everyone was excited about going island hoping starting on that Friday. Going to Paros, Santorini, and Crete was the only thing people cause talk about.
We took a larger ferry to get to Paros on Friday than we did when we went to Aegina. It was nice to move around on the ferry because the ride was about five hours long. We arrived to the island late at night and got to our hotel, Carmel, then proceeded to walk five meters to the sea and at dinner on the side, listening to the waves crash. I had eggplant salad and stuffed vine leaves which were delicious, food here is so good. We got back later and just relaxed. I passed out very soon after we got back from exhaustion.
On Saturday we explored the town a little bit and went food shopping. The people here observe siesta almost religiously, which is nice because you can just relax for two hours in the middle of the day. However, this does affect you walking around trying to get into stores during siesta. I suggest just relaxing or going to the beach during this time.
Today we went to a church called The Church of One Hundred Doors. It dated back to the Byzantine Empire. While we were there, there was a baptism going on and it was very interesting observing the ceremony. After the church we went to the Paros Archaeological Museum. It was awesome to see the artifacts and read about them. The only issue I had with the museum was that the description of the some of the objects had two paragraphs in Greek but only like a couple of sentences in English.

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