Category: Greece 2024

Happy New Year! (Happy Birthday Uncle Frank!)

We were roused from our slumber by the distant sounds of … a marching band? In my sleepy island? It’s more likely than you think — evidently it’s a tradition in town that the Philharmonic (I didn’t call it that, it called itself that) parades through the ped mall to celebrate the new year. We didn’t make it into town before the band stopped, however, so I have no pictures.

Lots more felt closed today, including Zimis, but the waterfront cafes were open, and Coffee Island also was open, so we spun around town and around the ocean side of the island, and then headed back to the cottage for more serial killer documentaries. Did you know that there was a pair of killers in Canada in the nineties nicknamed the Ken and Barbie Killers?

Yeah we might be running out of respectable serial killers.

(Not something you expect to say.)

New Year’s Eve.

Our tradition for, heck, fifteen years has been to have fondue! And I’ve spent some portions of the grocery visits in the last week trying to make sure I can put hands on enough of the ingredients to ensure that we keep this tradition going.

Unfortunately, our success in finding something worth exploring yesterday meant that we did NOT get into a grocery store, and the first concern was that maybe all the grocery stores would be closed today. Still no clue how the holidays work so it’s probably 50/50 whether the stores will be open or not.

Fortunately, we found our main place was open, and I was able to put hands on all the necessary ingredients — gouda (although just all young stuff, not aged gouda, the recipe wants some of both), a baguette, white wine (plenty), some potatoes, and some Vienna sausages. Even found little bags of cayenne pepper and nutmeg (although the cayenne is just marked “chili powder” and I only confirmed that it was cayenne by … tasting it).

But before the fondue, a diversion. So far, we really hadn’t been into the city proper — we tried one weekend, parked the car, but the wind was pretty impressive and would have made it less than fun to walk around. So after our exploring yesterday, I found a parking spot down by the waterfront restaurants and felt pretty lucky, so I pushed to take a little stroll. (I’m saying “pushed” but it wasn’t like H wasn’t up for it, it’s just easy sometimes to put stuff like that off when you have months in a place.)

So I had the parking spot, and we decided to take a quick tour through the pedestrian mall and see what might be open. The town square ended up being close to that north end of town, and a couple of cafes were open, so we grabbed a table and got a beer and a glass of wine and sat enjoying the town square and the giant Christmas tree in the center. The cafe closed up (with the waitress telling us we were the last customers of 2023) and we finished a walk up and down the ped mall before heading back to the house.

And back at the cottage, the tradition lives on. Made the fondue and despite some small adjustments, it was delicious as always. Cottage even came with little forks perfect for dunking bread in cheese.

The second half of the tradition is watching serial killer documentaries (we finally aged out of bad movies after the Rock of Ages debacle), and tonight’s offering was an “in his own words” kind of piece on the Unabomber.

Nothing says “ring out the old” like homemade pipe bombs.

There was a little flurry of fireworks throughout town at midnight, which we could see from the front patio. The fireworks came with a chorus of dogs howling from the neighbor up the hill.

All in all, a perfect end to what has been an absolutely crazy year.

After the unpredictable open-and-close schedule we experienced during Christmas weekend, we decided to throw caution to the wind and get off the island and explore a little. The plan was to head up the coast to Parga as the town looks like a Greek version of one of the Cinque Terre islands, take a bunch of pictures from the coast back at the pretty painted buildings, and rely less on things needing to be open necessarily.

On the road up, though, we got distracted by one of those dang brown signs that indicate historical sites, and in particular, this one for an ancient town built by Augustus after defeating Marc Antony of all things.

(Not exactly the type of brown signs we got back home.)

The “town” has a few sites that you can visit, the primary of which is an ancient theater (which was sadly closed on this visit), but also a giant wall (from the Byzantine era occupation), a site with an old Roman road, villa, and church with amazing tiled floors, and even some old aqueducts.

We were the only people in the whole area. Could have been because of the holiday weekend? Could have been that this type of thing just isn’t on the list of locals to check out. Might not be on the list for tourists in the summer either — but it should be. Crazy to think about the skill (and time) that it took to lay out those tile floors and frescoes out of tiny individual colored stones.

With the sun dropping and daylight fading, we threw in the towel on Parga and drove into Preveza instead. Preveza is, I guess, the local “big town” — about a half hour from the island, home to an international airport that hosts a bunch of low-cost European airlines like Ryanair — but still is only about 20 thousand people. It has a nice harbor and an “old street” pedestrian mall, and we found a little cafe in the center of town, right under a clock tower built during the Venetian occupation of the area.

mezédhes | μεζέδηεσ | small appetizer snacks

In this part of Europe / Asia / Africa, it’s customary to get a little plate of snacks with your drinks in a cafe. We grabbed a seat and ordered a beer and cider and were rewarded with a little plate full of boiled pork and potatoes, cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers, and some nice bread. A nice treat and surprisingly necessary, since we were both pretty hungry. Helped hold us over to get back to the island and grab souvlaki for dinner.

Cat count: ∞ (Preveza has more cats than people I am convinced)

Had an incident late last night as I was bringing the laundry in from the shed around back — which reminds me I still haven’t written much about the cottage — but suffice to say there’s no lights around the back of the cottage, but the little shed with the washing machine and dishwasher is still back there, and, well, the laundry load was done, so I went to grab it. Coming out of the shed I heard some activity in the bushes — so either I was gonna get jumped by whatever ferocious beasts live in the shadows in Greece at night, or I was gonna owe Loaf a snack for coming and making sure I was safe.

Thankfully it was the second.

We got her a treat and H gave her a little pet session, at which point we heard MORE activity in the bushes — but we never saw the other animal. It skirted around the dark at the back of the cottage, making loud HEH WOAH noises but otherwise staying hidden.

As long as I’m only treating one stray, ok, but let’s keep it at one. 😀

Souvlaki and gyro for lunch today, and some more melomacarones which are thankfully still around post-Christmas.

Work days on the island seem to be finding what might be a “bad” rhythm. Because we aren’t getting in bed until at least 12:30 and we end up winding down and not falling asleep until 2am or later, we end up sleeping in, sometimes way too late. It ends up leaving us with just a few hours of daylight where we can run around. I don’t know that waking up at 8am would make our days necessarily better or worse, so I don’t make much fuss. Get up, have a little breakfast, assess whether we need supplies, run into town for a Pokemon loop and a grocery stop.

Today we actually had a little extra time so we looped back around the outer edge of the island, down towards Tsoukalades and Agios Nikitas. The island outside of Lefkada Town still seems pretty dead, a cafe open here or a market there, but town itself is still pretty active. The curse of a summer beach destination, I guess.

Cat count: 3 (Loaf — pretty early this morning, to be truthful; one orange cat conscientiously using the crosswalk in Tsoukalades; one orange and white going into the pedestrian mall in Agios Nikitas)

Another late morning. We’re definitely catching up on sleep in the last two weeks, although I’m not sure why. It could be because the rooster in the yard up the hill also sleeps in — he usually starts crowing around 11 in the morning.

This is the first day the grocery stores were open post-Christmas, so we restocked a few little things — soda, water, cider — and then grabbed peinirli for lunch. The lady at Zimi’s recognized me and said “I have bolognese!” so Heather had a happy lunch and dinner. I’m still trying to figure out my favorite so I always check to see what’s unusual or that I haven’t tried, and today they had one with schnitzel, bacon, and BBQ sauce so naturally that came home with me. Everything inside a peinirli besides the cheese is just an afterthought, but a little meat is always appreciated.

H’s little friend showed up around 3 for a snack and a short visit. Starting to worry a little that we are setting this poor cat up for true disappointment when we leave and the next residents are cat-averse or worse! DOG PEOPLE! Heather is calling him “Gata” or Γατα (the Greek word for cat) but he or she always makes itself into a nice little loaf once she comes inside so I’m calling it “Pumpernickel.”

I’m working but evidently no one else is here.

A venture into town turned up the following: one open gas station; all the bakeries and cafes that were open yesterday are closed today, EXCEPT Zimi’s, which was closed yesterday and is open today, cornering the market I guess on afternoon snacks; grocery stores still closed.

I have decided I could definitely go for a four-day Christmas holiday.

H has a new cat friend that she’s bribed with cat treats. The cat was in one of our olive trees one night and jumped out and ran when we came home one night, then has made a few appearances during the daytime. I picked up some treats so H could bribe some companionship, as if me and Miss Kitty just aren’t enough — we’ll see if one feline friend is enough or if H tries to befriend the entire stray cat population of Lefkada.

Might need more treats.

Merry Christmas!

Slept in A LOT this morning, after a fairly late night last night. We figured that, since nothing was going to be open in town, that we were likely looking at a day of vegging on the couch. That was until … we ran out of soda.

At which point in time, we decided to venture into town to see if ANYTHING was open so that we wouldn’t have to resort to drinking only booze all afternoon and ending up trashed and asleep by six.

After all the gas stations along the road into town were closed up, we were surprised to find that pretty much EVERYTHING in town was actually open and the streets were teeming with people, going from store to store with kids, sitting in the cafes along Pirates road and Zimis road (not actual road names) or on the pedestrian mall or sitting in one of the waterfront cafes down by the bridge. Even the bakery and Coffee Island were open, so we availed ourselves of a coffee treat and some more melomakaronas (this time with chocolate covered ones!) before trundling over to the grocery stores for soda.

Of course, THOSE were all closed. Booze it is.

Evening for me was playing the Pokemon DLC, which I hadn’t downloaded when the first half came out, but was looking forward to playing.

Things should open up tomorrow but I’m not holding my breath, I read somewhere that the day after Christmas was also a store closure day in Athens, but I’m not sure how that will pan out here.

Took this afternoon to venture into the THIRD grocery store in a town of 8500. This one, called MyMarket, was easily the largest of the three, and had a bunch of stuff that were unexpected — salsa! worcestershire sauce! corn syrup! — but also felt like the most expensive of the three. The Whole Foods of Greek grocery stores, as we will now call it. Got more hard-to-find ingredients, a bunch of single-can Greek beers and ciders to try, all in all a successful stop, and we’ll go back in there when we run into things we want that no one else seems to have.

Stopped into Coffee Island and got a coffee treat, then went into the other bakery by Zimis, called Αργυροσ (Arguros) to try more melomakaronas, and stumbled onto another holiday treat called ladopita which is a Christmas olive oil cake that’s specific to Lefkada. Basically you make a giant pot of olive oil roux, stir in some sugar syrup, coat it in sesame seeds, and then bake it to dry it out. Another sweet with no binding agent that basically just crumbles in your mouth. Nice to find something that’s even more localized than yesterday’s treats!

ladopita | λαδοπιτα | olive oil cake

Cat count: 5 (one on either side of the doors into MyMarket, the swole orange cat from yesterday wandering around by Zimis, the judging cat by the town square, one crossing the street going towards the cultural center)

(gonna start naming them)

Short day today. Out of bed around 10:30 and the only thing on the books was to do some grocery shopping ahead of the weekend.

Grocery shopping today finally felt like I was paying American prices (despite that fact that I went in shopping hungry, bought like 20 euro worth of sliced meats, and like two days worth of actual food). Things found in the SKL* grocery store today: refrigerated croissants to bake, “nacho” flavored Doritos, maple syrup, some sort of fresh cheese that I bought because there were only two left and obviously everyone in town loves it. Things not found in the grocery store today: corn syrup, vanilla extract. The corn syrup I kinda get (because nobody in Europe wants that stuff anywhere near their bodies) but vanilla extract seemed like a slam dunk.

On the way out of town, we stopped at Zimi’s for pierlini for lunch. No chicken bacon today, so Heather had to suffer with a bolognese one (which she since has declared is in the running for her favorite flavor) and I picked one with a hamburger and mayo inside — this one was shaped a little different — less open faced and more round, like I guess you would expect a hamburger filled pastry to be. I also ran into one of the two bakeries that are at the end of the street and picked up some pastries to try, settling on the two we kept seeing that seemed to be holiday-specific. As a result, here is your Greek lesson for today:

melomakaronas | μελομακαρονασ | Greek Christmas honey cookies (top right)

kourabiedes | κουραμπιεδεσ | Greek Christmas butter cookies (bottom left)

The melomakaronas have an almost sandy texture, having no traditional baking binding ingredient and traditionally being dunked into syrup while still hot. They hold together but I’m not sure how, probably ancient alchemy of some sort. The kourabiedes are similar to Italian wedding cookies or pecan sandies. Both are traditionally only around during the holiday season.

We agreed that one kourabiedes with a latte would be very satisfying, and that you could roll a truck of melomakaronas round the house and eat them all day.

Cat count: 3 (a pair by the walkplatz, then another orange by the town square that looked like he worked out)