Spent a cozy morning sleeping in. It’s cold outside.
I grabbed lunch from Street Wok and took it back to the apartment. I don’t mind getting a late start even on the weekend — the whole reason we’re doing this “digital nomad” thing is to enjoy the life it affords us, and if “sleeping in” is part of the enjoyable life, I think you just grab it.
We walked down past Ermou and to the church square (it has a name? maybe?) and then were having trouble figuring out where to head next. I looked at the map and there wasn’t much in the area that wasn’t food, but there was another coffee roaster within walking distance, up northeast of Syntagma Square in what we read was the “upscale” district of Athens. They close at 5 so let’s get moving.
But of course there was a Pokemon thing going on, so we stopped and got a soda by Syntagma and played a little, then stopped again inside the Square to play and try and figure out what the little group of protesters on the steps were protesting. Suggesting? They seemed pretty easygoing about whatever it was. We think it was some sort of EU solidarity demonstration? They had a Greek flag and an EU flag but also a Ukraine flag and a Georgia flag but — there was only five or six of them and they were just playing some soothing music, not shouting any slogans or anything.
They cleared out and we eventually made our way up out of the square and into Kolonaki, which supposedly the chichi neighborhood in Athens. We did walk up a ped mall that had high-end fashion brands all along it — Bulgari, Chanel, Louis Vuitton — and the roads were wider and the sidewalks wider, so it did feel a little “nicer,” whatever that means. More upscale but more boring.
We made it to Samba Roasters with maybe ten minutes to spare. Very good coffee, probably the best we’ve had since we’ve been here and Dope is closed. The little cookie I got was good too. H bought a cup and a tote bag and it’s not so far that we couldn’t walk back up here for a treat some morning. (They had cardamom buns listed on the menu but there weren’t any left in the case.)
We walked back to the apartment and warmed up a little and tried to think what might be good for dinner. Since we had been around Ergon House when I looked at the map, I saw that Birdman was right around there — it’s a Japanese combo-izakaya-and-record-listening-room that’s on a bunch of Best of Athens lists, and heck yes I want some yakitori and some jazz. We headed over but they were fully booked inside, and sitting outside in the cold didn’t seem like the same experience, so we took a business card and will make a reservation for another date later in the month to get in there. We instead stopped back at another Asian place we had seen walking through called Noodle Bar which was a weird mishmash of various Asian styles — Thai, Chinese, maybe Malaysian? We had curry samosas which were great and I ordered the “Noodle Bar Special Noodles” which were sweet but yummy, something coconut-cream-based that was different than the Asian noodles I’ve been consistently eating here in Athens (which is a weird sentence).
Then just a stop at Da Vinci for a little baby gelato on the way home and another early night. Still, I’m glad to be carving out more and more “favorites” around town, it makes it less like a vacation spot I’ll never be back to and more like home.