I've always been whiny about cold winters, even though I am a Norwegian living in Greece I still hate the winters here with cold wind blowing through your bones. As summer usually arrive with full power around mid may, we got a visitor from my girlfriend’s aunt, and we took the opportunity to visit one of the islands that are to be found close to Athens, Aegina.



Aegina is to be found straight south of Athens, and in the old days this island used to contain the capital of Greece. Guess it made more sense back then to have the capital easily accessible and defendable from the sea. Two things I love about this island is that it is really close to Athens, only 45 minutes with a normal ferry, and my all time favourite ancient temple ruin are to be found here.



We rented some lame scooters (will get some more powerful ones next time) and explored the island, which can be exciting as the roads are not exactly in perfect state, hehe.
After hunting down a gas station, we went to check out the local temple, the sanctuary of Aphaia which is the coolest Greek ruin I’ve ever seen. I’ve been here before, and this was one of the main reasons I wanted to go back. The Acropolis is impressive and all that, but there’s just something about this temple and how it’s in the middle of nowhere on the top of a beautiful hill with amazing panoramic view that makes this place stand out to me. It was build around 490 BC, and it’s really interesting to think about how it may have been here back then when the inhabitants of Aegina island went here to worship Aphaia, the nymph who was though of as the daughter of Zeus.



After relaxing and doing some shopping in Aegina city, we travelled on a larger ferry back home while taking dozens of pictures of all the seagulls that were following the ship. This was a nice little one-day trip that really made me relax and appreciate living in Greece. Guess that by living in busy Athens and working too much is not good, so some small drips of spice is important to keep inspiration fed.

I hereby declare summer started ;-)