Biking in November - Aegina, Greece

The temperatures have dropped significantly in Berlin. So have the number of hours in the day. It's hard top be motivated to do a long distance ride when the thermometer hovers around 0 the entire day. Outside of getting around town and to work I sadly am impatiently waiting until next spring by sitting on a spinning bike at the gym.

But! That's why we had to go south to seek fairer skies and bike ride.
Now we find ourselves on the hilly Greek island of Aegina, with rented bikes.
We arrived yesterday in the port, quickly found the nearest bike shop and rolled away on two rickety mountain bikes.

The adventure begins again! We rode through the center of the island-up and down and up and down. I thought it would be sparsely populated but there were villages and houses most of the way. We were even surprised to stumble across a monastery as well as a myriad of churches.

The Agia Nektario - It is currently being renovated on the inside but Greek Orthodox churches are very particular with haloed figures adorning the walls. This one had some beautiful mosaics inside.

Aegina is pretty hilly, and atop every single hill is either a church or a chapel. Or in this case a monastery (actually it was kind of at the bottom of the hill, on the hill above the monastery are 365 churches - most of which are currently in ruin.

The island is tiny, which makes the hills bearable because you know they will ultimately end in a breathtaking view of the Aegean sea and the archipelago. It was 12 kilometers to ride from the west to east coast where we found our hotel in Agia Marina.

Classic "We Arrived" Photo

November is decidedly the off-season and we were the only guests in the hotel - actually the only tourists in pretty much the entire town. They invited us to their roof-top apartment and we chatted for a while. Evelin is Austrian and her husband, Vasilis grew up on Aegina. They told us about the packed summer season which, although would have been nice for swimming, sounded like we were better suited to have a private beach town to ourselves. They gave us some excellent Greek hospitality in the form of a shot of Ouzo, a shot of Tsipouro, and a huge pile of home-grown pistachios (Aegina is famous as the Greek capital of pistachios).

The result of a typical night on Aegina: Pistachios and Tsipouro

We then ate at the only open restaurant, and watched some basketball with some locals who had gathered in front of the restaurant to have a barbecue.

We were pretty exhausted given that we had just stepped off the plane, found our way to the port near Athens to take a boat to the island and biked around. So we slept - but very quickly because we wanted to explore and ride on Friday.

And explore and ride we did! Our first stop after a nice rooftop breakfast with Evelin and Vasilis was to the Aphaeas temple. The only ancient temple on the island that was used both as a place of worship, and also a direct line-of-sight to the Acropolis as a sea alert system.

Trying to be philosophical at the ancient temple of Aphaeas. I think it worked.

Then we rode around the coast a little bit to the base of Oros mountain, which we then hiked up. And of course, we had to ring the bell at the chapel.

We took some chairs from inside and enjoyed our lunch of cheese and pistachios while looking out onto the the island, the archipelago, and the mainland. During our time riding around we hardly encountered any cars. And the entire way up and down the mountain was silent with absolutely no sign of people whatsoever. Mylene even left her backpack at the trailhead, I think that even the wind didn't notice as it passed by.

It's pretty much as serene as it looks. The archipelago extends out to the left side of the photo. Mainland Greece and Athens can be seen on the right, the port of Aegina is front and center.

A pistachio sorting machine with a mountain of discarded pistachios to the side.

We rode a bit more after climbing down and checked out some pistachio orchards.

We got back to the port with enough time to wander around and get some home-made Pistachio (from Aegina) and Mastic (only in Greece) ice cream. We then got on the ferry and went to find our couchsurfers in Athens.

Mylène climbs up a hill along the coast overlooking Agia Marina

Enjoying some pistachios and the view on top of Oros mountain