We finally got the chance to visit Cat in Paris (well she’s only been living there since May!), so we were really excited to find flights that were more convenient and a better price than the TGV train. We had a barbecue at my school (another one!) so we managed to go to that for a couple of hours and catch up with some friends before getting the train to the airport and heading off to Paris.

We arrived in Paris quite late (around 10ish I think) and negotiated the RER trains and the metro (with very good instructions thanks to Cat!) to arrive at the Odeon stop near to Cat’s house. We met her there and were impressed to find someone who lives on an even higher floor than us but she does have a lift (cunningly disguised as a small cupboard!). Then we thought we should make the most of our time in Paris by going out to investigate the local nightlife in St Germain. We found a couple of lovely bars, had a little wander along the Seine and sampled several very nice cocktails. After that we made our way back to Cat’s for a good nights sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s tourism.

We got up, had breakfast and then went straight off to the Eiffel Tour, taking in a number of sights on the way. After that we very excitedly (well I was – I love boats!!) joined the queue for a boat cruise along the Seine. We saw many lovely sights and even learnt some interesting facts about Paris along the way. Some of us even saw a weird flashing bird (but I wasn’t one of them! ( Then it was definitely lunch time – after a long and careful decision making process, we had some really nice tartines with a variety of different fillings. Even though we were full, we had to follow that with Haagan Dazs ice cream as there was a restaurant just over the road and it seemed rude not to!

Continuing our tourism, we wandered to the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs Elysees and to the Jardins Tuileries (where there was a funfair – yay!). We had a little walk in the Tuileries funfair and then decided that it was high time for a drink in one of the little bars nearby. So we stopped to rest our weary legs and quench our thirst – with beer! Following this, more wandering was in order, so we made our way up to the Louvre and around that area before stopping for another drink nearby (wine this time!).

I was keen to visit Montmartre and see the Moulin Rouge as I couldn’t remember seeing it on our school trip. So we got onto the metro to take us up to Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur. We wandered up the hill to get a lovely view over Paris and then walked through Montmartre looking for a good place for dinner. After being rejected by the first restaurant who on principle didn’t want to move a chair (!) we found a really nice place where the food was delicious (even if they had run out of the food I wanted!). It was also amazingly well priced at 26 Euros for 3 courses! By the time our incredibly cheerful (!) waitress had served all 3 courses it was getting late so we decided that going back to Cat’s was probably wise – poor Cat had to get up for work at 3am and we were planning on going for a run in the morning. We walked back through the interesting scenery of Montmartre to the metro and back to the flat.

In the morning we woke up well after Cat and set off for our run – Ben had already got a route planned, map and all (think he’s getting quite into this running lark!). Not a bad place to run, Paris – we had to run for 75 mins and ended up covering 12km! Lovely views of the Louvre, the Tuileries, along the  Seine, Champs Elysees and of course that big radio mast thingy that all the tourists want to see! We went back to Cats (even climbing the stairs to continue the exercise a little longer!) got ready and went back out for Brunch (it was between 11 and 12 so that seemed the best option. We had planned to have crepes but the shop was shut so we had that other French thing, a baguette (which came with dessert included – lucky we’d just done a 75 minute run really!). I wanted to go to Montmartre again so we headed back up there, going to grab a couple of drinks and go and sit on the grass outside the Sacre Coeur to take in the view. Somewhere along the way, Ben decided to get a ‘crepe, oh actually a crepe with ham, well maybe a crepe with ham and cheese, or maybe a crepe with ham, cheese and egg.’ We weren’t even hungry after brunch so you can imagine how that went! It was a gigantic crepe  and very nice, but we needed a good long walk after that to work it off!

We had a agreed to meet Cat in the Tuileries funfair as I was desperate to go on this bungee ball ride thingy (you know, the ones that everyone watches and hardly anyone is stupid enough to go on!) and Cat really wanted to go on the log flume. So we met a newly refreshed Cat, back from work and a little nap, ready for fun at the fair. We went on the log flume all together and then Ben and I went on the bungee type ride. It was great fun, although to quote myself just before they released the springs ‘we are a bit stupid doing this, aren’t we?’. Glad we did it though – bouncing around in the sky looking out at the Eiffel Tower is actually lots of fun!

After more walking (and more Haagan Dazs!) we knew we’d have to start making our way back to get our things and go to the airport. We went via ‘Invalides’ where Napoleon is buried in 6 coffins (allegedly – I didn’t count personally, we didn’t really have time to go in) and where there is a beautiful church and gardens. Eventually, we tore ourselves away and went back to collect our things and go to Charles de Gaulle airport. All in all, a lovely weekend – thanks Cat, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did and HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR TODAY!!!

Click here to view the photo gallery of all the pictures we took over the weekend.

Since we had to leave the boat on Saturday 1st August, we had decided that we should spend Saturday in Athens, staying the night and then flying home on Sunday evening.  This would give us a chance to explore Athens (apparently there’s a bit of history there) as well as extending our holiday that little bit more.  Unfortunately, being (almost) a good Swiss citizen, I was upset not to be spending Swiss National Day in Switzerland, but what could we do?  So with this plan in mind, we left Aegina at the ridiculously early time of 08:00 on a flying dolphin over to Piraeus.  From there we jumped in the taxi my mother was using to get her to the airport, and asked the driver to drop us off at our hotel for the night – the Hilton Athens.  Since it was only about 10:00 by this point, our room was not yet ready so we decided it would be a good idea to get over and see some of the warmer sights before the day got too hot.  Nathalie seemed to want to stay in the air conditioned hotel, so we left our stuff with her and headed out.

 
Luckily the hotel was close to a metro stop, so we headed straight there (not that easy considering the things appear to be deliberately hidden!) so that we could get to the Acropolis quickly.  The Athens metro is extremely nice and clean, as well as being pretty cool compared to outside – but there again I wouldn’t really expect anything less from a system that’s only 5 years old!  We got to the Acropolis station (cunningly called Acropoli) and headed up.  We bought the standard tourist ticket for most of the major sites in downtown Athens, which gives access to the Acropolis and also the Theatre of Dionisyus, the Ancient Cemetery of Kerameikos, the Athenian (Ancient) Agora, Roman Agora and Tower of the Winds (Horologion of Andronicus) and the Olympeion (Temple of Olympian Zeus) – all for ?12!

We headed up to the Acropolis (unfortunately with the entire contents of a HUGE cruise ship, the Ruby Princess, that was visiting Athens that day) via the Theatre of Dionisyus.  Even though it was not even 11, the sun was getting extremely hot and the crowds did not help.  We did however manage to get a good few snaps of the main sights of the Acropolis.  We then headed down again to the Ancient Agora to have a look around there.  Thankfully it was less crowded so we could spend a bit more time reading information instead of rushing around.  After that it was about midday so we thought we’d better head back to the hotel since our room would be ready and we were approaching the hottest part of the day.  We stopped off at the Haagen-Dazs restaurant for a bit of a cool off and sugar fix (we were both feeling a little tired as had already had quite a long day!).  On the way back to the metro station we stumbled across the Roman Agora and Hadrian’s library so popped our heads round the gates to have a quick archaeological nose around.

Once back at the hotel we checked in properly and headed up to our room for a couple of minutes before heading straight for the outdoor pool – the best place to spend the hottest hours of the Greek day.  Nathalie had to leave shortly after so Becky and I dozed and swam the afternoon away until it was cool enough to head back out to catch up on the sights we’d missed and grab some dinner.  We walked from the hotel down to the ancient Olympic stadium which was refurbished for the inaugural modern Olympic games in 1896.  We then headed over to the Temple of Olympian Zeus just around the corner and attempted to get some arty pictures taken – let us know if you think we succeeded!

At that point we were getting a little weary so decided we would head towards Plaka to find a taverna for dinner.  We were fully aware that this would be likely very expensive (relative to normal Greek prices) and probably not as good as other restaurants, but Plaka is a lovely place to wander around for an evening and I wanted Becky to see it – so off we went.  Conveniently the national gardens and parliament lay between us and Plaka (well kind of anyway) so we headed off to do a bit more exploring before dinner time (it was only 20:00 at that point, a bit early for Greek dinner).

After wandering through Plaka and checking the menus at each and every taverna we came across, we settled on a nice big taverna with a large outdoors area underneath some trees in a slightly quieter courtyard.  This allowed us to have a nice quiet dinner instead of being harassed by passers-by and street sellers all evening.  We decided to do the standard Greek thing of ordering several different dishes and sharing them between us – something we tend to do anyway even when not in Greece.  Unfortunately (as is normally the case) we over ordered because everything looked so good.  The waiter felt it is position to tell us that this was probably too much food but we dismissed him – he clearly didn’t know us (or more specifically me).  After dinner – which was extremely good, and of course far too much – we had a digestif of Mastiha and headed back to the hotel.  We thought it would be a good idea to walk off some of the excess food so it took us a little while.

Once back at the hotel we decided to have a nightcap at the hotel bar called Galaxy, on the roof offering a night time view over Athens and the Acropolis.  Unfortunately they neglected to mention their ‘no shorts’ policy anywhere, but since we were staying in the hotel, a quick change later and we were back up there.  The view was very impressive (unfortunately the camera shot from my phone does not really do it justice) but that is what everyone else also clearly thought, so there was no chance of finding a table outside.  We had our drink (I had a Gingerini – I would highly recommend no one ever try one – I couldn’t even finish it!) and then headed downstairs to get a bit of a rest before hitting the rest of the sites on Sunday.

Sunday morning saw us heading down to the hotel gym and pool.  An impressive layout of machines including a water bike, which was novel, meant that we easily let a couple of hours slip by and before we knew it we needed to check-out.  We did so, and left our luggage at the hotel (the airport bus left from just outside so it was ideal for us to go sightseeing and then return to collect our luggage on the way to the airport) and headed into Athens.  This time we were heading straight for the Kerameikos Cemetery, which was a bit of an adventure finding – mainly because you have to navigate through an impressive flea market to get to the main entrance.  The ancient cemetery is impressive, as is the accompanying museum showing all the artefacts that they have managed to salvage and preserve.

After visiting the cemetery we had one more stop on our list, and that was the Acropolis Museum which was opened about a month ago.  We were starting to run short of time, so decided on taking the metro to get there.  This lead us back through the flea market where we picked up some authentic souvlaki (not sure what kind of meat to be honest) which were very tasty!  We were quite concerned after the metro kept us waiting for a while, and the queue to get into the museum seemed huge, that we weren’t going to make it around the museum.  As it was, we only had about 40 minutes, but we zipped round as the experienced whistle-stop tourists that we are and think we managed to take in most of it.  The museum is very impressive, in a huge building (with plenty of room for expansion as new artefacts are found) which is raised off the ground to show the ancient ruins below that were found while the building was constructed.  Since it costs a whopping €1 to enter, I would highly recommend anyone visiting to go to the museum – possibly leaving a bit longer than we did to see everything!

After the quite exhausting run through the museum, it was time to head off to the airport and home.  Once we were all checked in and waiting at the gate (the flight was delayed) we were called over to the gate staff over the Tannoy.  A little worried as to why, we were pleasantly surprised to find that Swiss had deemed us suitable for an upgrade to business.  So we had a nice flight back to Zurich in full comfort while taking full advantage of the extended drink offerings in business class.  The only dampener (literally) when we landed was that it was 17 degrees and raining – oh well, there go the tans!

 
All in all, a fantastic holiday and one that I would do again in a heartbeat.  Now to look forward to the rest of the summer stretching before us.  Vienna and Paris beckon.

For all the photos of our trip, checkout our photo album by clicking here.
For the scrapbook entry showing the route of where we travelled, click here.
To view all of our Summer Holiday 2009 posts, click here.

We awoke in our nice little bay and decided to start the day with a refreshing swim (lucky I had no running today otherwise it could have been a bit tricky!). We then decided to explore Ageistri, the little island we were connected by shoreline to. We took out the dinghy and Ben rowed us over to the rocks. Then we did a bit of scrambling up rocks (it would be wrong to call it rock climbing!) to get to the top of the hill that we could see. It was full of very prickly plants and so by the time we were back at the boat, we were a little scratched and bruised but proud of our explorations. John, our instructor was not surprised that we’d already (to put it in his words) "circumnavigated the island by land and sea" before anyone else was up! We all had breakfast on the boat, Nathalie doing a sterling job of swatting away flies, as she’d had to do earlier in the week in Vathy and Poros, when we were bombarded by the creatures. We suspect that her green flip flop had become renowned as a wasp killing device amongst the ‘wasp community’. By this stage, she often only had to show the flip flop to the wasps and they would flee, fearing for their poor little lives! During breakfast, I did a little experimenting – I had an apple that had gone bad so I decided to see if the fish liked it – as you can see from the photos, it went down rather well!

After breakfast it was time to set off for our last day of sailing. It became apparent that ’some people’ were required to go and get the shoreline from the rock it was tied around and Nathalie and I were nominated. We got ourselves into the dinghy and very cleverly pulled ourselves along the shoreline to the rock (it was much quicker that way). Apparently that wasn’t really the point and Ben and John, determined to see us actually row, released the entire shoreline into the sea, so we had nothing to pull ourselves back on AND we then had to pull up a really long, heavy, wet rope from the sea into our little dinghy – getting rather soaked ourselves in the process. Apparently this and our fantastic rowing style was entertaining to everyone in the boat, who kept taking photos. We were very proud of ourselves and demonstrated what a fab ’shoreline recovery team’ we were!

We stopped for lunch near Moni, where there was a chance for a swim, some snorkelling and for Ben to collect yet more shells from the bottom of the sea for me. I’m surprised he managed to swim back up to the surface under the weight of all of the shells he collected! Now I just have to decide what to with them all!

We arrived back in Aegina and got our certificates (mine was ‘Competent Crew’, Ben’s was ‘Day Skipper’). Then we decided we’d quite like to hire a scooter and explore the island of Egina, as it looked quite good fun. We were taken over to the hire place by someone our instructor knew and when we arrived there, were intrigued to discover that they also had quad bikes, which looked fun too. After a little think, we decided to get a quad bike, so we set off, Ben taking the first turn. We had been given directions to get to the nearest petrol station but were not entirely sure we’d taken the right turns. luckily we found a petrol station before the quad bike ran out of petrol, which was quite a relief. We then explored the roads back to Aegina and onto Perdika – the route is described underneath the map below.

Our quad biking route took us from Aegina town around the coast to Souvala for petrol then down through Kipseli and back to Aegina. From there we went south along the coast road through Faros, Marathonas, Aiginitissa and to Perdika (where we stopped to explore and have an ice cream by the sea!).

We wandered around Perdika for a little while before deciding on a restaurant with some interesting ice creams and a lovely views (as you can see from the photos above). As usual, we opted for the ice creams with names we didn’t recognise and so we had no clue what was in them! They were very nice although I suspect one of the types of ice cream contained some form of cherry! We had to get back soon after that as we were going for dinner in  Aegina. First hurdle to overcome was finding our vehicle – and would you believe it we even struggled to find a bright yellow quad bike in a car park – no hope!! We had planned to take it in turns on the route back but I was enjoying driving the quad bike so much and Ben was having so much fun filming the route with the camera, that I ended up driving us all the way back to Aegina. We returned the bike to the man from the hire place (who was amused by the change of driver!) and set off back to the boat to get ready for dinner.

We had a lovely meal at a restaurant called Hippocampus, were Ben and his mum and sister had eaten last year. They had some very interesting cocktails (peach mojito and strawberry mojito) and a great assortment of greek dishes, which we all tried lots of. Interestingly, instead a menu, they presented us with cold versions of plates of food which we then had to choose from. Which would not have been a problem had there not been about a hundred dishes (I may be exaggerating slightly, but it was a lot like the memory test on the generation game – only without the cuddly toy!). Again, very full, we made our way back to the boat for our last night’s sleep afloat. We needed it – the next day we would be up very early to get the dolphin and start the journey to Athens for part 2 of the holiday!

For all the photos of our trip, checkout our photo album by clicking here.
For the scrapbook entry showing the route of where we travelled, click here.
To view all of our Summer Holiday 2009 posts, click here.

After the night sail that Becky mentioned in her previous post, we decided a lie-in was in order (we had after all got to bed well after 2!) so we didn’t surface until about 9ish.  In keeping with our (new) tradition of running in Poros, we headed out for another run.  Becky wanted to head a different route (a bit of variation I think) but I persuaded her that any other route would only be worse (ie more crowded, less breeze, less view, etc) so off we went.  Today’s run was an interesting 3 min walk followed by 3 min light jog followed by 3 min fast jog, repeated 5 times.  That all meant that we ended up going far further along the coast than last time, almost making it to Russian bay and the channel away from Poros!  As a cool down we once again went for a swim in the sea, thoroughly enjoyable!

Once we’d had a leisurely breakfast (well brunch really, it was about midday!) we made ready to leave.  We weren’t sure where we were headed, just basically north.  Once out of the Poros channel past Russian bay we decided to head northwards in the general direction of Aegina.  Since the winds were still northerly (force 5) we had some good practice sailing close to the wind and keeping the boat at some absurd angles – but still making good speed over the water.  The one thing that we knew we wanted to do was to anchor out in a bay for the night, so we thought we would head over to Ageistri (Agistri/Angistri) as John reckoned there were some nice bays there that we could anchor in.  Since it was already quite late, we decided to skip a lunch stop and head straight there instead so that we could get a nice afternoon and evening in the sun without having to worry about moving on.

Once around the south west corner of Ageistri we investigated a couple of possible bays, but ended up opting for the first bay we saw which coincidentally was where all the other boats were also anchored – there must be a reason for that!  The bay looked out over the tiny island of Drosousa (or Dhoroussa, it seems that all of these islands have several different spellings!) and was sheltered from the winds and swell, which suited us very nicely.

John went ashore to connect a shore line for us, and after the second try our main anchor held.  To add extra security (and as a good bit of training) we decided to drop a second kedge anchor to give us additional hold.  Unfortunately the sheet bend we’d tied to the trip line gave out as we were lowering the kedge, so we ended up needing to cross our fingers and hope that we’d be able to retrieve the kedge without the need for the trip (it was about 15m deep there, so I wasn’t going down without a tank).  In our normal carefree style we decided to forget about the anchor and have a couple of drinks and a swim.  We had a lovely meal of chicken and rice cooked onboard by my mother, and then a nice relaxing digestif watching the sun set until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer.  Off to bed in preparation for our last (unfortunately) day of sailing.

For all the photos of our trip, checkout our photo album by clicking here.
For the scrapbook entry showing the route of where we travelled, click here.
To view all of our Summer Holiday 2009 posts, click here.

So off we went sailing from Ermioni to Dokos. We then made our way to Ydra, arriving in the late afternoon. As we were arriving, we got a good close look at a flying dolphin (as you can see from the photo). We couldn’t quite tell where the entrance to Ydra actually was at first – it was sort of hidden by some surrounding rocks. However, as we got closer, all became clear and we steered our way into an already very crowded harbour. Luckily we were not planning on staying the night, just a short visit for dinner before our night sail to Poros. The crowdedness appeared to put off several other visitors and we saw a few boats pull into the harbour only to turn around when they saw that the boats were all parked four or five boats deep.

We attached ourselves to some other boats and decided that rather than climbing on five other boats to get to the quay, we’d make use of our handy little dinghy. Unfortunately, previous experience had already taught us that the outboard motor was not working and that someone would have to row (guess who volunteered?). So Ben pumped up the dinghy and John volunteered to stay with the boat just in case it needed to be moved (also because the tiny dinghy was not going to be able to transport five people to shore in one go!). Very carefully, we arranged ourselves into the dinghy and Ben rowed us to shore. Due to the crowded shore area, we had a bit of a problem finding a space. Ben had another problem – rowing backwards meant that he was being directed by three women!! I think he found that in itself challenging as we all directed him to different spaces using a combination of instructions such “go to your left, I mean my left” “I mean go right” “I mean portside – or is that starboard?” “Oh, were you directing him to that one, I thought we’d go to that one over there” “But is there one over there? It looks full to me!”. We all decided that the experience was very ‘character building’ and miraculously found ourselves a spot, managing to clamber up the wall to the shore so we could explore Ydra. The journey back was even more entertaining, but more of that later!

Ydra (as you can probably see from the pictures) is an incredibly beautiful little town, and one in which vehicles are not allowed. So transport everywhere is in the form of donkeys. Of course, this meant that we had to travel in traditional style and went for a little donkey ride. A lovely way to see the island, although I’m not sure how happy the donkeys were about it all – they seemed in a bit of a hurry!

We then went for a little wander to see more of the views before making our way to the restaurant we had chosen for dinner – a pretty little place with tables set out in a little square under the trees. After some rather questionable wine, we managed to find some nicer wine to drink with our meal, another assortment of traditional Greek food. Then it was time to get some provisions from the shop and get back in the dinghy to the boat!

On the way back we decided to get some frappes and smoothies as well as a takeaway for John and the provisions, so we were a bit more weighed down as we tried to get into the dinghy. If the journey over to the shore was entertaining, the way back was even more fun. Partly because it was dark, partly because we were now crammed into the dinghy with lots of shopping bags and three drinks which we were trying not to spill. We had to navigate our way out of the corner we’d parked in, taking it in turns to push the dinghy away from the other boats as Ben rowed. We were in fits of giggles by the time we got back to our boat, but again, it was ‘character building’! We put everything away on the boat and got ourselves ready for the night sail (for me this meant putting on extra jumpers in anticipation of being cold!). We sailed out at around half past nine in the evening and had to use the compass and lights around us to help us get to our destination. It was lovely to be able to see the stars and to sail in darkness, although a little scary when the boat heeled. I overcame a little fear of taking the helm in the dark and did helm the boat for a while in the dark – I have to say, I prefer to be able to see where I’m going. However, it was interesting to use lights to guide us and to rely on that. Very early the next morning (two or three am I think), we arrived in Poros, where we managed to find a spot to park on the pontoon, park the boat in the dark (well, Ben did!) and managed to annoy the man in the boat next to us by accidentally waking him up as we pulled in! Oops! He was OK about it in the end though and we settled down for a celebratory drink before going to bed and guessing what time we’d all wake up in the morning (or whether it would be the afternoon before we got up!!)

For all the photos of our trip, checkout our photo album by clicking here.
For the scrapbook entry showing the route of where we travelled, click here.
To view all of our Summer Holiday 2009 posts, click here.