This won't be the most fascinating trip report. There are no major sites, few people reading this will have any interest in the type of trip I'm on, but this site is a bit hard up for trip reports, so I might as well.
This is my 4th time in Greece, and my 3rd time in Agistri, a small island in the Saronic Gulf close to Athens. We chose this island for a few days of beach and relaxation after Sightseeing in Athens 4 years ago and loved it so much we went back months later (which you can read about in my old posts).
I don't know why it took us so long to come back to a place that is basically paradise for me. We started exploring Italy, which we'd neglected for years. In 2019 we wanted to come but flights were "expensive" (less than we paid this time) - so we went to Istria instead. Then covid hit, so we managed a safer driving vacay to Switzerland and Italy last summer.
So once the vax hit, my thoughts turned to Agistri and I booked 5 nights at Hotel Kekrifalia in May, knowing that this popular gem fills up. As the summer went on, Covid cases also started rising in Greece, and then the fires, then dealing with pet health issues and then personal health issues, our 2 weeks of a smaller beach getaway combined with a 9 day road trip through the Peloponnese started to seem out of reach.
But the day to cancel our hotel reservation came and we decided to commit at least to the 5 days in Agistri and less than a week before we left, we bought less-than-ideal plane tickets for 8 nights (Covid has greatly reduced the bargain flights we used to find easily within Europe).
But we were going. I worked my tour guide gig all day on the day of our departure, blessing German public transit for having a bus to the airport from the same transit stop in the east of Stuttgart where I dropped off my group for their return trip to Robinson Barracks.
From our Sweden trip we knew to be at the airport 2 hours early for document checking, but Aegean air had given us boarding passes with a QR code and I had my traveler QR code from the Greek Government, so with our carry-on bags we went straight through security, which was fine - the problem was we should have gone to the gate personnel so they could confirm our vaccination passport. Whoops, didn't discover that til boarding, but after a quick slip out of the line, we were good to go on a long (for Europe) and packed flight.
Welcome Athens transfers greeted us, and while we've both taken transfers and the metro before, I'm glad we splurged on a transfer to the basic but comfortable Hotel Argos Anita in Piraeus, getting in about midnight. We walked quite a ways to grab some late night gyros cheese fries by the pleasure boat harbor, and a drink at the classy and fun Belle Amie. Parts of Piraeus can have a real charm about it at night, but that tends to fade in the heat of day. Even though we'd only get 5 hours of sleep, we resolved to take an earlier ferry to get to Agistri ASAP...