2:16 AM

Aegina is a thirty-minute metro ride and a one-hour ferry ride from the Pangrati neighborhood in Athens. Today, yesterday actually, marked my second trip to the Saronic Island. Three lovely friends of mine, Erika, Markella, and Jenna, hopped a taxi with me for another ten-minute ride to the Monastery of St. Nektarios. A brief synopsis of his life can be read here. The weather was anything like my previous three trips to Greece. It was a day of gray skies with steady drizzling rain. Regardless, the monastery was as beautiful as I had remembered it. The property was surrounded by desert, mountainous terrain, with flowers and plants lining the white cement and brick buildings. Although the visit lasted all of two hours, there is something about being there that is so peaceful. I can’t pinpoint if it is the beauty in its simplistic environment, the chapels, tomb, or the quiet of the monastery itself. I can only hope that through photographs, blogging, and written journal entries, I can go back to that place and remember the indescribable way it felt.

PC: Erika Tobin