massive

Today’s goal: Head into Plaka and take some photos / video in Anafiotika.

I had grabbed us lunch so we were maybe making a late start of it, but we’re still both a little under the weather and an easy day in the cold air would do us both good. We walked past Hadrian’s Kitten Ranch and into the tail end of Plaka, and right at the end of Lysiou Street there’s an alley with a taverna in it, under lights and pennant banners, that always has musicians playing and looks very picturesque, so we decided since it seemed unlikely that we’d be having dinner in our new favorite Aerides (it’s only outside seating), we’d have some wine NOW rather than LATER.

The wine was good. Evidently there’s some grape that’s grown mostly only in Northern Greece and it makes up something like 40% of the red wine consumed in Greece? I always just ask for the house wine, so it’s probably that. We got a little thing of bread to snack on that came with a tomato dip that was very good, if maybe a little too summery for this weather, and then I had seen a table with a piece of what was clearly portokalopita so I ordered some of that as a treat. It came with mango sorbet and was, finally, EXACTLY what I want whenever I order it. It was obviously made the same way that the one H had made in Lefkada was — crumpled up phyllo dough, some batter, then baked and soaked and fridged until it was super cold. It had the right texture, the flavor was great, the slice was big enough for two even though I think I ate most of it. We didn’t have a full meal there but everything smelled amazing so I think we might at some time.

But the light was running on us so we picked ourselves up and wandered back into Anafiotika. It’s a small sub-neighborhood of Plaka built by carpenters who had been brought from the southern islands to work on some castle refurbishment project, and had tried to replicate their island homes. Lots of whitewash with bright blue accents, lots of higgeldy-piggeldy alleys and staircases, very photogenic. The neighborhood kinda goes up a small section of the side of the Acropolis, and once you get up to the top, there’s a little ledge where you can see the whole town. (That’s also where I tweaked my knee last year so I have a healthy grudge against it, but it’s very charming, and I think I saw Video Cat sleeping on a roof, which I like.)

We found our way back down before it got too dark, and wanted some food, and I’m not gonna lie, eating in Plaka is hit and miss. Some of the places can be quality but more likely they’re going to be touristy and overpriced for just OK food — you go for the spectacle and you just are OK with whatever it is. We skipped over it and decided to stop at Aerides after all, figuring it would be the best food option and they’d have their heaters turned on, so it couldn’t be too bad.

We got the same thing we got last weekend — bekri meze which is some stewed pork with crispy potatoes, some meatballs in a tomato sauce, some bread, some wine. We limited ourselves to just one carafe of wine tonight, though, and opted for an early night back in bed.

We stopped at the kiosk near the apartment to stock up on some snacks and then curled up in bed and watched The Traitors.

As the “big Carnival weekend” is approaching, we keep reading that all sorts of merriment should be expected around town, so we thought we’d go out and find it today.

But first, food. We decided to check to see if our new favorite taco place was open, but as we got closer we also realized we could get pastitsio from H’s new favorite place — she’s kinda been dreaming about eating it again — so we swerved right instead of left to go get that, only to get down there and see that they were already closed up for the day.

I guess tacos it is.

We retraced our steps back towards the taco spot and sat inside. It’s been a cold week or so in Athens, in the low-to-mid 40s most days, so we sat inside so our tacos wouldn’t immediately get cold. The tacos are very good but I don’t know what type of tacos they are — the tortilla is corn but pressed and griddled and it gets close to tostada crunchy, but it still has enough flexibility that you can fold it up and eat it … well, like a taco. Their barbacoa is excellent. It did make me nostalgic for Mexico City and I am happy that, tentatively, we have some time in Mexico penciled in for later this year.

We decided next was coffee and the weather was limiting our options a little — some places would be closed, some were mainly outside seating, so we decided to head to Mokka (really the eye-opener of the week, so tasty and really as close as any other coffee shop) to get coffee. As we walked, it turned out that we were right by The Clumsies, site of last summer’s heatwave-sweat blue cocktail stop, where the waitstaff just kept bringing us containers of ice to put in our water. They also do coffee, so we audibled and stepped inside, only to find that the place was PACKED with humanity and they were on a waitlist. We waited for a bit and looked at the new winter menu and … the cocktails were not really speaking to us. Let’s just say “lots of mushrooms.” So we audibled back out and headed towards Mokka after all.

We grabbed a table outside at Mokka. The patio is in one of the “tunnels” leading into Varvakios Market so it’s protected from the wind a bit, so it was pleasant enough. I’ve been trying filter batches of the various beans just to get some variety, and it’s been fun, and they’ve all been tasty. I got a little apple pie too. (Coffee needs a sweet treat.)

Heading back, I had promised we’d hit Krinos on the way back through, so we stopped and got loukoumades and chatted. The inside of the shop feels like the old original Churreria El Moro in Mexico City — I half expect to find the TVs turned to soap operas.

Our last stop was Ergon House / 72H to see if there were any baked goods to stock in the house for overnight. We grabbed a block of cheddar cheese, another tote bag, a baguette and some sweet treats for later, then called it a early night.

It’s Tsiknopempti!

This is “Smoke Thursday” or “Meat Thursday” in the Greek Orthodox calendar, one of the last few days Orthodox Christians can eat meat leading up to the fast of Lent. So they do what you expect and take a day to eat as much meat as possible. The “smoke” name is because usually businesses and restaurants will set up grills with tons of meat skewers and grill all day.

Last year we accidentally learned about the holiday because as we drove in to Lefkada, it looked like a forest fire was taking over. We kept passing houses on the outskirts with guys just handing out around giant grills, and all the restaurants on the main walkplatz of town also had setups. We went in and got some sticks and a beer before work. It’s a great holiday.

So we figured this year we’d be in Athens, we’d be in the heart of some big celebrations, right? The website says there’s a performance by the Philharmonic, traditional dancing, all up by the big meat market (which is close to the apartment), and so we set an alarm, if you can believe that, and were out the door around 10. Philharmonic started at 11, after all.

We set up at Mokka, a coffee shop on one of the main avenues through the market, and got some coffee and a tyropita and waited for the performance to start. Or the parade, there was also possibly a parade? Eleven came and went and we saw a couple guys wandering around in fancy dress, but no musical sounds to be heard.

The Philharmonic (I’m assuming, they were dressed like a marching band) finally started playing around 11:30. We paid our tab and hustled over and got to watch some of the performance, and just as they were wrapping up, a traditional dance troupe wandered in and started dancing, and kept dancing while a … traditional Greek slash rock band? … kept playing. It got my spirits up, for sure, it looked like a lot of fun.

There was a stage set up behind the band where some guys were likely going to eventually start grilling some sticks of meat, but it wasn’t kicking off immediately, and there must have been two hundred people waiting in line by this time, so we figured we’d try and see who else was out grilling. We wandered down Athinas towards Monastiraki Square and found …

… nothing?

Nope, no one was out grilling. At least, not quite in the same way that Lefkada was doing it. There was no sign of any meat on sticks being in our future.

I suggested we wander past O Thanàsis, a taverna right off the Square that is on the map and supposedly does good traditional Greek fare, to see if anything was happening there, and if nothing sparked us, we could continue on around towards Ermou to see if anything was going on.

O Thanàsis is cute (and also the 49th most legendary restaurant in the world, according to the sign!) so we checked out the menu and ultimately took a table. H got a single chicken skewer (very good, she said, would eat again) and I got the “Thanasis pita” which was 4 skewers of ground lamb and 4 roasted tomatoes on a pita. On one pita! It was all good, the bottle of wine was like five euros, it was a little pricey comparatively because of the proximity to the tourist areas, but we’ll go back again.

It got closer to work time and, since we’re both still a little sick, we took the short way back to the apartment, stopping to say hello to the Hadrian cats and stop at the grocery store for soda.

It still felt like something must be going on, though, so at lunch we put our shoes back on and went out to see if we just expected it to start earlier than it actually did, but no, nothing. Nothing at the tavernas nearby, nothing around the corner, nothing on Ermou, nothing at Monastiraki Square. Total bust.

We had done all our normal “fast food” options in the last two days and I didn’t feel like cooking, so I suggested Wagamama, which is right next to our apartment. It was good but not great. (We can get better Asian food at Streetwok honestly.)

Hopefully early to bed tonight.

H was determined to not waste the last day of her three-day weekend despite still not being 100%.

I hunter-gathered for lunch a little TOO early and everything we normally get was closed, so I decided to go see if Fillo (or one of the other bakeries around it, there’s a little street of bakeries and traditional food shops) was open. Sure enough, they were open, and I got a chicken pie and another pie with bitter greens and smoked cheese from northern Greece that was excellent. I also grabbed a slice of pastitsio from one of the traditional food places which was a success as well — so much so that the chicken pie was still around later in the day for snacking.

We made a late exit from the apartment and got a snack at Poncho (our taco spot) — you gotta get it when you can because their opening hours are erratic and not also accurate. Tasty stuff, always.

Still undecided on what to do, though, we came back around Kolokotroni and H suggested stopping at Barley Cargo, a craft beer place near the Syntagma end of the street, that we regularly pass by but hadn’t tried out. Honestly I haven’t been drinking much beer in Europe the last couple years. I tried in Lefkada but all the Greek beers are basically the same — a light lager, overly sweet, and usually I end up with a headache if I drink more than one. This place, however, was a legit craft beer bar, and I ordered a guava sour they had on tap, followed up by a New England IPA, both from Greek craft breweries. H got a cider and we sat and snacked and drank. One thing I will not complain about is the quality time with her.

But I’m not feeling great either, so after that, we headed down to Ergon House / 72H for some baked goods and H got a thermos to take home, and we headed back. Gotta listen to your bodies some days.

Short post today. H started to feel a little scratch in her throat last night and felt worse today, so perfect day to take it easy and surf it out since Monday is a holiday and we’re not going straight back to work. I grabbed Streetwok for lunch and we agreed to just hang out. I got going down a rabbit hole on some Canadian bands doing covers of songs that was more about the process of hashing out how to make a cover sound like you while still being recognizable and .. it was fun! I grabbed curry from the Indian place that always smells so good and got WAY too much food — there’s leftover tikka masala in the fridge for someone some day. Hopefully H feels better tomorrow.

The chicken pie from Fillo was a big success, so we decided to start the day over there for lunch after a late-ish start. (I guess “-ish” is doing some heavy lifting there because H’s checkin says it was 3:30.) That chicken pie is excellent. I got a minced beef pie (just to try something different) that was also very good. Definitely getting added to our “early meal” rotation since it’s not open late and you definitely want to get here early if you want the good selection.

Then we wanted coffee and I had recently read an article about coffee in Athens that suggested Η Ωραία Ελλάς (The Beautiful Greece) which was an old-school kafenia that had kinda started the whole push for coffee in Athens and still had old-school Greek coffee. We got seats out on the upstairs terrace (it was gorgeous out this weekend) and took a table overlooking the little street that winds through the Monastiraki flea market. H got a latte, I got a traditional Greek coffee and a piece of portokalopita (cake soaked in orange-honey syrup) which I had been on the lookout for since we had arrived. Another addition to a cycle of little places we can switch up and sit and chat for hours. Always happy to have another one.

By this time, we were getting hungry again, and so we wandered up past Hadrian’s cat brothel and to Aerides, which I think has supplanted Diodos as the weekend taverna of choice for that four-hour-two-carafe-of-wine dinner that really everyone should enjoy in Athens. The little waiter apologized when he brought us the English menus but when we said no, we need the English, he said “I thought you were Greek, your kalispera (good evening) was so good!” (It’s like one of twelve words I know, but I do like that even that little bit impresses people.) We ordered wine and bread, H ordered the bekri meze which what *I* was going to order, so I decided to flip back on the last time we ate here and asked about something from the grill. The waiter said, “You don’t want that. You can get that everywhere here.” OK, what do I want? He recommended either the moussaka (which I will try at some point) or the daily special, which was meatballs in tomato sauce with potato puree. Yeah, give me them meatballs. A very happy meal, a second carafe of wine, some more of the mastika they bring around, a good night. We’ll be back. Maybe again this weekend.

We strolled back towards the apartment, taking a slight detour to check out the Gate of Athena which is at one end of the Roman Agora. The moon was shining through the gate, it was a great sight. Then we detoured again to Da Vinci and got some gelato for the walk back. I tried the “marshmallows” which was baby blue and tasted like sugar cereal marshmallows. (In a good way!)

Athens is not getting old.

Happy Valloween! Yeah it’s evidently a thing in craft circles. S1 epilogue 1 video is now up!

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.

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.)

We finally made it over to Ergon House / 72H in time for them to still have baguettes! I considered buying two but baguettes don’t exactly have a long shelf life, so instead I figured I’d get another cardamom bun to have late-night tonight. H got a croissant and some sort of potato-leek handpie with laminated dough and hot honey that looked pretty good as well.

Since we were right next to Ergon House, we also went in so H could pick up the coffee cups that she fell in love with the first time we were in there.

The baguette was delicious. It was labelled as “sourdough” and it definitely had that … “interesting”? … slighty-tangy taste that sourdough sometimes gets. The texture of the inside was perfectly French, though, and the crust was particularly satisfying. The potato-leek pie was almost sweet from the leeks which were very caramelized, and the pastry was perfectly fluffy and crispy, but the potatoes inside were a little weird. Still, very enjoyable, and I know that cardamom bun is A+.

We stayed up pretty late last night. Here’s hoping to any early night tonight. It’s the weekend.