Growing in Greece: Dream Day

January 14th, 2011

     Today was our first group excursion to the island of Aegina. Definitely one of the best 5 days of my life. After taking the ferry to the island, we all split up and went looking for a place to rent mopeds. It ended up only being 20 euros for two people to ride for a whole day- so awesome! Arnold and I were riding partners and the first thing he told me (apparently sarcastically but not so sarcastically) was that he had been riding for six years. Lies, lies I tell you! It was his first time on a moped! And he wasn't just driving himself! But it all turned out fine so I won't be too hard on him.
     First stop on our moped was getting gas because of course when we got them they were on empty. We toured around following McKenna and Kellye a little while until 7 Greek guys on 3 mopeds came up and offered to show us where a gas station was. We were riding for what seemed like forever all along the beautiful coasts of this little island. I was a bit scared for awhile, a bit scared meaning I was clinging to Arnold so hard I'm pretty sure I stretched out his shirt. But eventually I got more comfortable with the whole situation and we even went pretty fast. He was probably the best driver I could have asked for since he was really cautious and slow when we started out, then as his confidence grew, mine did as well. THANKS ARNOLD! :)
     Five euros for gas and then some beautiful pictures. I literally cannot explain in words how amazing this island was. It was a sunny day, the oceans, and cliffs, and AWWW! So perfect! Eventually we made our way back to our starting point in search of the ruins of a temple but we never did end up finding it. Along the way we ran into a lot of people from our group while we had stopped at the edge of a cliff and found out a couple of them had gotten into accidents. One with cops involved with no injuries and one where they ran off the side of the road with some major gashes. Thank goodness I brought band-aids! Poor guys! And they still road around the island for awhile after that too! Then off Arnold and I went by ourselves to find these ruins, up, up, and up the island. We were in a little neighborhood when we decided to go back-roading with our not-so-stable moped. Walking the moped seemed like the best option in a lot of spots and we eventually just stopped completely and wandered into the wilderness getting ourselves pretty muddy.
     We were supposed to meet at our starting point at 2pm so we had to book it back. It's super easy to tell the difference between a local and a tourist on Aegina: not a single local would be caught dead (can you say punny) wearing a helmet. Not only that but they go at least 20 mph faster than us too.
     All around and absolutely AMAZING, ASTOUNDING, MESMERIZING, top day of my life. Definitely the highlight of the trip so far! I hope we have more excursions like that one :)

On top of the world,

Susie QQQ

P.S. It was definitely the perfect day to wear a skirt. Grunge jacket on with a flowy skirt on the back of a moped= picture perfect :)