25/07/09 – Saronic Islands, Greece – Aegina
We got up reasonably early to get our flight from Zurich to Athens , arriving in Athens around 1pm. We then had a little time waiting in the airport for Nathalie to arrive. This took slightly longer than expected because the very helpful airline had managed to lose her luggage at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam (which was less than useful!). Eventually, 
we got into our taxi which took us to Piraeus (the port in Athens) and from there we took a flying dolphin (it’s a hydrofoil, rather than the animal kind!) to the Saronic Island of Aegina (and actually to the town of Aegina too!). There we were met by George from the Aegean Sailing School and John, our instructor for the week. Tentatively making our way over the gangplank, we loaded our bags into our new home for the week, ‘The Southern Cross‘ a 37 foot Sun Odyssey yacht. 
We settled into our new home, finding out where things were and how th
ey worked. Following that, we 
headed into Aegina to explore a little and to get the provisions we needed. After that, we went back to boat, unloaded all of the shopping bags and had a couple of relaxing drinks on the deck, enjoying the sea breeze and a lovely sunset. Later on, we popped into Aegina again for dinner near to the fish market – naturally, we had some very nice and very fresh fish. Finally, we made our way back to the boat for our first night’s sleep afloat, to prepare us for a busy week of sailing ahead.
We will be adding the photo album shortly (once we’ve reduced the vast number of photos!!) and we’ll be adding more blog entries from each day of the holiday as time goes on – so keep checking back!
To see where we went over the course of the week, have a look at our scrapbook entry, which has a map showing the places we stopped along the way.