Athens

Since the four of us had all been to Athens, we tried something a little different than the usual Athenian tour.

We boarded a high speed ferry for a 40 minute ride to a small island named Agenia.

After our short ride we disembarked and met our tour guide. Since we had never heard of this island, we did not know what to expect. To our surprise, this island played major role in ancient and recent history.

The Island was named for the daughter of a river god. She gave birth to the first king of the Island who was the grandfather of Achilles and Ajax, the heroes of the Trojan war.

The island was a hub for trade around 2000 BC. It is also the first place in Europe to make coins.

In recent times it was one of the sites considered as the capital of Greece and the location where the current constitution was drafted.

We drove out of town to a hilly area. We walked up a rocky pathway where we found pieces of terra cotta pottery everywhere. We were the only people hiking here. As we walked we passed low stone walls and small stone buildings.

The first stone building we visited was built in the twelfth century and had housed the head of St. George. This small church was decorated with frescoes and is still used today for services and celebrations such as baptisms.

We soon realized that there were many small churches on this hillside.

Each place is a small gem of an Eastern Orthodox  place of worship. The local community takes care of these places and you can visit many of these churches. They are built with the remains of ancient ruins and are a hodge podge of  pieces of carved marble, columns, hand cut stones and bricks.

Our next stop was the Sanctuary of Aphaia. Founded in 500 BC, it is an amazingly complete temple.  There was a small, fascinating museum on site that described the temple in detail with a reconstruction of some of the sculptures from the pediment.
We returned to town where we found pistachio ice cream that Bob christened “the best ever”. 

We are so glad we ventured off the beaten path. We feel like we experienced what Greek life is like away from the big city and learned a lot more about Greece.

Narrative By Patty

When we got back to our stateroom, I (Brenda) pulled up Facebook only to see that my cousin, Rae, was in Athens today also. It would have been a hoot to connect with her in Athens! Moral of the story is that we need to keep in better contact.Läs mer