Around Aegina

On our last day in Aegina we had to take a local bus to the port on the other side of the island to catch our ferry back to the mainland. The bus was rickety, and Laura needed a Dramamine to brave the curvy mountain roads, but the ride through the little inland houses and stretches of pine-covered hills was surprisingly scenic.
This side of the island was much more populated, as you can tell from the crowd at the café we ate lunch in.
For dessert, we bought some strawberries off a purple track-suited vendor who operated from her boat. I had to go aboard to pay.
View of the shoreline, with its many motorcycles and a Greek Orthodox church:
Boats!
The water in the harbor was amazingly clear, which afforded a good view of the many sizes and types of fish. These gray ones seemed to be eating algae off the bottoms of boats.
We look so legit with our backpacks. (The blue and black one on the ground is mine).

Yamas!

Although we flew in and out of Athens, most of our time in Greece was spent on the island of Aegina (pronounced "egg-eena" with the emphasis on the first syllable), which is about 45 minutes away from the mainland by ferry. We had a little trouble getting there due to non-running bus and metro systems, which meant everyone at the airport was queuing for taxis. After we made it through the line and the 45 euro taxi ride we found ourselves at Athens' port city, the dreary, deserted and industrial Pireas, ten minutes after our intended ferry had left.

Luckily, we were still able to catch the last ferry out two hours later. Here is our first view of Aegina, whose port seemed all the more picturesque after our two hours of purgatory in Pireas. It was almost worth missing the first ferry to see the full moon rise over the island.
Our hotel, the family-run Kavos Bay, was at Agia Marina on the quieter Western side of the island
Due to our early, non-peak season arrival and the recent economic crises, we were the only tourists at our hotel (and almost on our side of the island). The result was that the island's many bars, restaurants and hotels were open but oddly empty--and exclusively ours! This is the patio of our hotel.
We also had the beach all to ourselves. The water was a bit cold yet, but definitely swimmable with a good dose of sunbathing before and after.
The coastline was pretty rocky. On our first morning we clambered around the rocks and across little coves to check out the tidal pools. The rest of the time we just found sunny rocks to lay on.

There were a lot of fossils in the rocks:
The only shot I got of myself was of my feet:
Look how clear that water is!
The little glimpses I got of corals, urchins and aquarium-worthy fish are making me really consider taking a scuba class.

We got VIP treatment in the town, where we were among the only clients. We ate out every night--"Greek salads" (cucumbers and tomatoes topped with a huge square of feta), fried feta, feta and peppers (seeing a pattern yet?), fresh fish, stuffed vine leaves and Greek variations on kebabs. We also spent a long evening with Mike at Mike's bar, a chill South African-Greek who gave us free shots of "rako", the island moonshine, and brought us fruit cocktails with sparklers in them. Yamas! ("cheers," in Greek)
Our hostel was about a mile's walk along coastline and through pine forest trails from the Agia Marina town center.

Watching the ferries and the fishermen made our St. Mary's spirits long for sailing
We woke up on our last morning to watch the sunrise...
...though we all agreed that the full moon over the water was more beautiful.

"Running around like a clown on purpose..."

We spent Laura and Jason's last night in Paris seeing Mika, a bubble gum pop star/gay icon whose songs are dangerously catchy, sung in falsetto and always a lot of fun. His show was somewhere between Freddie Mercury and an acid trip--he's all about bright colors, outrageous costumes and lavish sets. Spectacle, baby.

The concert itself was in the 'omnisports palace' in Bercy, an arena built into a grassy hill in a way that must have been really futuristic in the 80's. It was packed with a young, energetic crowd. We opted for the floor, so we spent our pre-concert time enjoying one of the perks of European venues: cheap, plentiful beer.
Mika's biggest fan base is in France, so he goes all out for his Paris shows--I think we must have cycled through about 7 set and costume changes, not to mention a collection of puppets and a back-up opera singer. The concert started with a bizarre video intro from Sir Ian McKellan (otherwise known as Gandolf or Magneto) announcing Mika's participation in a space expedition. When Mika came out on stage, it was in anti-gravity slow-motion as an astronaut among glowing celestial orbs:
Mika changed costumes every couple songs, rotating through hats, tail coats, t-shirts with tails (which I'm convinced are going to be the next hipster trend) and my favorite, a long "fur" coat that looked like it was made from muppets:
I was also impressed by the fact that Mika did all of his talking in French, and even translated the first verse of Grace Kelly into French for the live performance. We dug it. Here we are dancing and singing along (awkwardly, of course...)
The encore was ridiculous, with huge balloons tumbling down from the top of the bleachers to be bounced around by the crowd, while the entire crew of back-up singers, musicians and puppeteers joined Mika beneath streamers and confetti on stage.

Touring friends 'round the Tour Eiffel

Having guests in Paris is a good excuse to get out and take advantage of all the cool things the city has to offer that I generally ignore as a resident. It's also a cool way to get reinfected with the awe of a first-timer. Laura is the world's perfect tourist: she is eternally curious, easily amazed and all about photographs and souvenirs (LOTS of souvenirs). And she had never been to Paris before. Hearing her gasps as we wound through Montmartre or the hallways of the Louvre made me remember how ecstatic I was the first time I came to Paris. And walking through France with Jason once again just felt natural, in a comforting sort of way.

Their first day here was a beautiful day to be outdoors. We started with lunch in the garden terrace at one of my favorite crêperies, and then we just walked around--through Notre-Dame, along the Seine, past the Hôtel de Ville to Tuleries, the Palais du Louvre and the Opera House. We stopped for mid-afternoon cocktails in sunny, curbside cafés and finally ended up in the multicultural Bastille area for dinner.
The next day took us to the Jewish/Gay district of the Marais--one of the only Parisian districts that doesn't shut down on a Sunday.
In fact, the Marais was so hoppin' that we had to queue to get our hands on a pita from the legendary L'as du Fallafel. It was worth the wait, though, as Lenny Kravitz knows...
Just our luck!--an old man Jewish street band started up just across from the curb where we were sitting munching our falafel.
And then, of course, we had to take Laura to see the Eiffel Tower...
...and climb it...(Apologies for this unflattering view. Laura was my designated ass photographer for most of our trip, as she has a knack for lagging behind and taking "action" (stalker) photos)
...and only a million stairs later, voilà! Can you tell it was windy?
Monday was our day for Museum-ing, which meant that I got to see the Italian Renaissance, Greek and Roman sculptures and Egyptian wing of the Louvre for the nth time. (I really need to make it back there someday when I don't have tourists in tow to see the other parts). I amused myself by imitating artwork. Here I am, posing with Ms. de Milo and a girl who is totally jealous of my mangled limbs/torso:
And now I'm paying patty cake with an Egyptian bear.
And then, of course, we couldn't let Laura leave France without trying escargot. Delish.

Dépaysée with friends: a retrospective

I met Jason on the first day of my first college class: French 206, introduction to French literature. At that point neither of us had any plans of majoring in French and we had both signed up for the course on a whim: he, because he saw language learning as a sort of brainteaser but had run out of intro levels to take; me, because French had always been easy (and fun) in high school, where I had effortlessly been the best in an elective no one took seriously. We were both a little intimidated by the end of that first day; we were going to be expected to read whole books--plural!--in French, and in the company of upperclassmen, no less. We ended up thriving, however, becoming friends, and eventually, French majors. We were on our way.

I got my first taste of Eurotripping the summer after that year: 2006, the summer of the European heatwave. I spent a week in Paris on an embassy scholarship while Jason finished a summer semester in Montpelier. When we were done, we met up for a crazy series of sleeper car trains, hostels and managed to backpack around most of Venice and Rome before we traded gelatto and tuscan wines for air conditioning and laundry machines and came home.


Here's us, in a bar in Montpelier. Stripes were in that year, apparently. Note our skill at covering each other's sweaty pits for the sake of the photo.

We both found ourselves back in Europe two years later, in the spring of 2008. I was on my junior year of study abroad, first in Oxford, then in Nice. Recently graduated, Jason was working as an English teaching assistant in a little French town in the Lorraine. He visited me in Oxford for a taste of England and Ireland, then again in the spring, when we added a new member to our traveling team: Laura. A good friend and roommate of mine, Laura jetted over after her own semester in Oxford to join us on a backpacking trip through Amsterdam, the Rhine valley, Munich and Prague.

Here we all are in Prague. Between the grooming, the scarves and the pea coats, you can tell that we're learning to be European.

A teacher who saw this picture at the time told me to treasure it. This is the last time this picture is possible, she said. The next time you go back to Europe, even if it's soon, it'll be different--you won't have quite the same ceaseless energy, the same wide-eyed wonder. You'll be adults.

I've been thinking about this because I saw Laura and Jason off at the airport this morning. Both graduated and working full time on the East Coast, they took a week of vacation during my spring break to come see Paris and travel with me. And so here Jason and I are now, 2010, four years later:

(Stripes are still in, apparently, or rather any variety on white and blue patterns)

And here we all are overlooking Athens on our last night in Greece:


Some things are the same: I haven't lost my love of weird earrings, nor Laura her love of purple purses, and Jason still rocks at striking an awesome pose and highlighting my awkwardness in comparison. We definitely look older, though, and the trip overall felt much more adult than our previous adventures. Hostels and night trains having somewhat lost their charm, we opted for private rooms with en suite bathrooms and cheap but direct flights. We also indulged ourselves more and ate out more often: full meals with appetizers, wine and dessert--not the budget kebab stand fare and pasta cooked in a shared kitchen that we had sought out in college.

There's something to be said for the wonder of salaries and the take-things-as-they-come travel Zen that only comes with experience. There's also something to be said for the company of old friends, and the easily remembered travel rhythm of a group you know well. I never really did decide if I agree with the teacher's comment, but one thing definitely didn't change: I had an amazing time traveling with Jason and Laura. Details to follow in this week's posts...

Hyde and seek with French littérature

Knowing I needed to get some reading done in London but reluctant to miss out on playing tourist, I compromised with a leisurely morning in Hyde Park and its neighboring Kensington gardens. After roaming the grounds, I bought a latté at a lakeside café and dove into Maupassant (a 19th century book I really enjoyed, about a man from humble origins who takes advantage of the fact that he has an irrisistable moustache--seriously!--to seduce numerous rich/powerful women).

The park itself was nice; a little less manicured than Parisian parks and but still full of fountains and memorials, and even memorial fountains! My favorite find was a Peter Pan statue that was apparently commissioned by J. M. Barrie and installed in the middle of the night to appear as if by magic for children in the morning.





Later in the day I wandered through some posh neighborhoods and past a pub frequented by Voltaire (I suppose during his post-Candide exile?) over to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Like D.C.'s Smithsonian, all London museums are free, so I went on in and began browsing their collections of British artifacts. The museum itself was pretty interesting, housed in a building that mixed the old and the new, with a traditional dome in the lobby paired with a strange modern glass sculpture. Its open, two-story wings allowed you to look down onto the exhibition floors of castings from above, which was a cool perspective. The museum's contents were a strange mix as well, ranging from European antiques and artwork to less traditional museum fare like ironworks, early digital art, and even a wing celebrating theater via a collection of costumes, props and lighting. The definite highlight was the impressively lifelike rhino costume (but is it an Asiatic or and African?) used in Ionesco's Rhinocéros, which has remained my favorite absurd theatre piece since I read it for a course a few years ago. Brilliant.