Grabbed “breakfast” from the new stand we found around the corner, a little pizza-ish place that has, I don’t know, foot-long? rectangles of pizza in various flavors. Think like the size of a small pizza box, cut in thirds. (I say this because I got three different flavors and they put them side-by-side in a box for me to take home.) The “plain” was just OK but I liked the mushroom slice I got. (I mentioned it a few days back, it’ll stay in rotation somehow.)
After getting our nourishment, we needed coffee, so we headed out to explore and stopped at Tailor Made first to cover that base. We both got iced coffees — maybe not the best choice considering that the weather is pretty cool today?
Most of today we spent wandering back through Plaka, this time one of the “outer rings” rather than the higher-up inner rings we had already gone down. At that level, it’s mostly a string of tchotchke shops and tourist traps, catering to the hordes of tourists that will show up here once the weather warms up. We made it down to Hadrian’s Arch at the eastern edge of the neighborhood, and crossed the street to look into the park of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, taking some photos into the park while listening to a couple guys playing (I think?) Jamaican steel-drum music from a boombox. We spied some green parrots flying between the trees, and later learned that a flock had escaped from quarantine some time back in the 80s or 90s and had established breeding colonies around the city.
We needed a snack by then, and we found a Lukumades outpost by the park that had some heaters turned on over the outdoor seats. We got an order of loukoumades and coffee (hot, this time) and sat for a little.
After our snack, we walked a little deeper into Plaka and turned back into the heart of the neighborhood to find a place for dinner. We took a couple turns and went up a flight of stairs looking for the place we ate LAST week, but we definitely ended up in a part of Plaka we hadn’t seen yet, and found a cute little taverna with an indoor dining room (important!) and we grabbed a table by the fireplace. H got a chicken skewer and I got the daily special that was stewed veal with mushrooms and rice. (And of course we got wine, and then more wine!) Our attempt to get portokalopita (which was also on the specials list) was thwarted, so we settled for some “regular” cake which was a perfectly pleasant end to the meal.
At some point in the meal, we had a visitor — some kind of winged bug crawled out of the mantle over the fireplace and wandered around the wall behind me. Big. Like, two inch big. It kept sneaking in and out and I probably wouldn’t have been anywhere near as afraid of it as I was if I hadn’t drank 7/8ths of a carafe of wine. But I also didn’t want to just whack it with my shoe in case it was some protected species of critter that only nests in this one taverna in Athens! But I will also admit that we checked the bag to make sure we weren’t taking it back to the apartment with us.
We made it back to the apartment pretty early and fell asleep before midnight. I’m sure that will mean an early day tomorrow.
(Haha come on.)