When I was going for a run on Aegina from Vagia to the Temple of Aphaia I ran past this little stone building in the middle of an olive grove. I don’t know what it is used for, but I bet it it is full of farming equipment used to grow and harvest olives (although I am not sure what you really need to grow olives – I think you just let the trees do their thing? Anyway I think it is a nice building.
It is so easy to get fresh fish in Aegina; every restaurant has a great selection of local and fresh fish. In the middle of town there is a small fish market, surrounded by little seafood restaurants, and the fish is fantastic!
One of the restaurants outside the fish market. I don’t recall the name of the fish that I ate, but it was a huge plate of really small sardine-like fish with soft bones. I just ate the entire fish, and they were really good! I am getting hungry just remembering my meal.
This is a view of the main town in Aegina from the ferry back to Athens. It is such a beautiful little port, and I so want to get back there for a few days.
This is how you get a carafe of wine in Aegina – a simple copper cup and a small glass. While the cup may not look very big, it holds a healthy 500ml wine. And the Greek wine is surprisingly good; very light and refreshing. And unlike South African wine the alcohol is only around 11% or so, not the crazy 14-15% of our red wines. I could get quite used to this wine!
Aegina is the European home of pistachio nuts. Every shop has them for sale, and if you talk to the owners they will tell you that the nuts are grown on their family trees (excuse the pun). But when you start to wonder around the island you start to realise that it is true. There are pistachio trees grown all over the island, and it is difficult to walk down a street without your feet crunching on nuts that have quite literally fallen on the ground.
And its not just the nuts that you can buy, you can buy pistachio nut bars, pistachio ice-cream, pistachio nuts soaked in honey, raw pistachio nuts, roasted pistachio nuts, with salt, without salt…you get the idea.
And in the restaurants you will almost certainly be given a small bowl to nibble on while waiting for your meal.
On our first morning in Aegina, I wondered down to the port to find a bakery to get something for breakfast, and I saw this wonderful tall ship in the harbour (yes I actually did take my little point & shoot camera with to the bakery – you never know). Anyway I am glad that I had my camera with me, because by the time we went to the port later in the day it was gone!
In my previous post I shared a photo of some old and decaying shuttered doors. I took this photo on the same street in Aegina – just a few houses down. This window tells a completely different story. It is wide open, sparkling clean, and telling a completely different story. This one is of life and activity, not death and decay. It almost balances it, doesn’t it?
There is a strange beauty in decay, and these shuttered windows are no exception. I took this pic somewhere in Aegina Town in Greece, I can’t tell you much about them, but I find them beautiful, and I’m sure that if I listened closely enough I would find a story worth listening to. But I prefer to make up my own story, wondering what was, and what could have been.
The old islands are full of stories.
On one of my Aegina runs, I came across this interesting statue (and this is one of the great things about going running on holiday – you see all sorts of interesting things). I did some research after my run, and I realised that it is directly opposite the Kapralos Museum. Kapralos was a famous Greek artist, and the copper statue symbolizes the Greek mother, a woman who toils in devotion to her family.
I ran past this little harbour on one of my runs in Aegina. Just a quite and peaceful spot to spend a few minutes.
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