It’s the weekend. Time to do some exploring!
Hoping to have better results than our first “exploring” outing in Tirana, I still turned us north out of the apartment, as that’s really the one direction we hadn’t explored. (South is Monastiraki and Ermou Street, where we go all the time; east is Syntagma and west is Psyrri and we’ve dipped toes around those.)
(Mostly I want to see if there are other options for fast lunches or dinners. Man cannot live on noodles / cheeseburgers / asian alone.)
We wandered up a pedestrian street lined with shops that felt a little more “neighborhood-y” than tourist-y. Not quite a specialized district though — some shoes, some clothes, a coffee shop — more like a bunch of shops for the residents living around it. Our first stop was when we noticed a counter that looked like it was selling little donuts and H asked me what they were selling so I read the sign:
ΛΟΥΚΟΥΜΑΔΕΣ & ΜΠΟΥΓΑΤΣΑ
Loukoumades and bougatsa! Yeah I can be on board with that. The place is called Krinos and they are a seriously old-school bakery, and I had pinned them on our map, but I hadn’t really looked at it before setting out — kinda the opposite of exploring, I guess. No English on the menu, old linoleum floors and tiny tables and chairs, and another service counter back in the back where they were frying hot loukoumades for immediate consumption. I got us a plate with “syrup” and a couple of drinks to share. They were lighter than the ones we had at the namesake place on Irini Square, and we both agreed they were probably more enjoyable.
Sweets though can only get us so far, so as we now knew we were on the backside of the meat market, we decided to go around the market to try out Mokka, a coffee roaster and cafe that offers ibrik coffee, similar to Turkish or Bosnian coffee, finely ground and brewed in a copper pot in a heated sand bed. We tried a couple different options, both were interesting and enjoyable.
After that, we took a short walk up to Omonia Square before deciding to loop back towards Syntagma. H had found another coffee shop to check out, which I’ll mention in a later post when we actually get there, because we got distracted by a photo stop and then our hunger and found a taco shop that looked straight out of Mexico City, and stopped for a much-needed meal.
The tacos were great. They even had jamaica so I’m pretty sure they’re actually from Mexico. We got an assortment of tacos and some guacamole, and all of them were delicious, especially the birria — that’s the ‘must get’ for the next visit.
By the time we finished up there, the coffee shop had switched over to ‘young people out to be seen’ mode and the music was bumpin’, so we zigged and zagged our way back towards areas we kinda knew. Even though H had gotten a margarita in the waning moments of our taco stop, we both agreed that more wine was in order, and we found a pizza shop that we had been recommended and it was still early, so we checked to see if we could get a table and some drinks. They said it was OK so long as we were out by 8:30, so we had about two hours — we ordered a pizza and a bottle of prosecco and I’m not bad about continuing to celebrate H’s new job. (And we were out by like 8!)
We wound our way around on the way back to the apartment, trying to avoid Ermou Street, since it tends to be insanely busy and very very touristy. We grabbed a little gelato from Da Vinci and took a seat on the steps of Agias Irinas, the church near the apartment, to eat and soak in the nightlife.
Lots of fun. Lots of new favorites, lots of places we’ll go back to. My phone says 5737 steps which is about half of a normal Paris day? Didn’t feel like it.