GREECE 2010: Our Trip To Hydra

We thought it would be entertaining to take the ferry to the island of Hydra for a few days, so we set out on planning our excursion. We had the choice of taking the ferry from the Athens port, Piraeus, or driving over to the Peloponnese Peninsula and catching boat there.

Don got online and checked out the ferry schedules and we decided to go out and spend the night and return the following day. So, he made his hotel reservation and then went back to the ferry boat site to make our reservations on the boat. Darn these ferry sites! They never work. He tried and tried and couldn't get our reservation accepted. Finally in exasperation he called Hellenic Ferry Lines on the phone to resolve the issue. Surprise! The ferry workers would be on strike on Monday, so no ferries that day. Well, ok, we will go on Tuesday, then. Well, no, we wouldn't be able to go to Hydra on Tuesday because the dock workers would be on strike that day. So, Don called and canceled our hotel reservation and we hope we are not charged. And we decided to try a day trip to Hydra on Wednesday.

The strikes in Greece have gotten very ugly. Three bank workers across the street from the Parliament died from smoke inhalation when demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails through the bank windows. We stayed away from downtown Athens on the strike days.

We got up bright and early on Wednesday and headed out around 7:30am to catch the Metro to Piraeus to catch the 9 o'clock ferry to Hydra. We got to Don's favorite parking spot, near the Citibank, and hustled several blocks along the very busy Marathon Road to the Pallini Metro Station. There we marched up to the ticket machine and tried to buy two tickets, but the machine would not take our paper bill. The nice woman waiting to use the machine finally took pity on us and gave us 2 1E coins to use. We tried to pay her back with dollars, but she just smiled and waved us on.
Well, that little hangup put us a few minutes behind schedule, but we had a cushion so we knew we could make it in time for the boat. We got on the train and made our transfer at the Monastiriki station and everything was going as planned. Oops. We sighed in relief too soon. The Blue line was having some repair work completed at one of the stations, so we had to get off and take a bus for part of the route. We arrived at a bus stop at a busy intersection, not the port, and everyone got off. Oh Oh. Now what do we do????

Luckily we saw a bus information stand and asked for help. We were directed to another bus, with after a lengthy cross-town trip, did deliver us to the port. Well, sadly, as we looked across the road, we saw our ferry to Hydra just pulling out. We missed it. So, we went into a ticket vendor shop and bought a ticket to Aegina instead. Hydra will have to wait for another day.

We had a nice ride out to Aegina and walked over to the archeological site which includes the excavations of ancient settlements built one upon the other, from 800BC right up until 1800 AD. There is a big temple to Apollo and a very nice museum to display the many artifacts, mostly pots and clay figurines, discovered during the excavations. There are very good descriptions of the various layouts of the towns and fortification walls as they expanded and improved down through the years. The setting of the ancient village is on a bluff between the current port area and another very pretty azure blue bay.

After the museum visit we walked around the town, enjoying the cute village and searching for Don's favorite ice cream bar. The town was very busy with crowds of teenagers on a field trip from school. The weather was quite nice, a bit breezy, but nice and sunny.