One last espresso freddo from Coffee Island. One last tiropita from the bakery. For this trip, anyways.
We caught some rain in the first hour of the drive back to Athens, but once we were across the big bridge in Patras, it was clear sailing. Turned in the rental car, wandered into the airport, and got Burger King of all things for lunch. Had some little struggles getting all the luggage headed in the right direction (including having to check the drone) — we’ll learn for the trip back — then through security with plenty of time to relax until they announced our gate.
The flight was only an hour, barely long enough for the crew to give the flight briefing, do a quick run through with a beverage cart, and then come and collect the empties.
We collected everything pretty quickly and caught a cab into town. We got dropped off in the rain but found the entrance to the apartment, moved everything in, and then went back out to survey the surrounding neighborhood. There’s a supermarket in the first floor of the building that’s pretty well stocked, so we picked up soda and some things for breakfast.
Also in the base of the building is a pizza shop, so we went and sat down and indulged ourselves in what must have seemed a crazy extravagant meal to the poor kid waiting on us — two salads (two!) and a large pizza, and beer and wine, all amounting to about half of what it would cost in the US. We opted for a pizza with local sausage and fried potatoes (thinking it would be similar to a pizza I loved when we were in Aviano) — the local sausage (sujuk) was tasty and spicy, but the fried potatoes were French fries! Still, quite a tasty pizza.
The bed is comfy, the apartment is comfy, so more tomorrow.
Today is Smoked Thursday, one of the Orthodox Christian holidays around Easter and the last day they can eat meat before Lent, so the whole town sets up little grills and cooks up whatever meat they have lying around. Tavernas in town grill up souvlaki and sausages and the whole country celebrates.
We had driven into town just to pick up some supplies, but we kept driving past gatherings of people with a smoking grill, and it became obvious we were going to have to at least check out what was going on. Neither of us were 100%, but we parked by Zimi’s and then headed down the walkplatz to see what we could find. We eventually picked a taverna close to the center of the walkplatz, grabbed a table, and then ordered some drinks and some skewers.
(I didn’t see the sausages until we needed to get back.)
Very happy to get to experience this. It ended up causing us to read a lot more about Greek Orthodox traditions AND to find out that it was likely that the whole town was going to get crazy over the next ten days, since the Greek Orthodox pre-Lent “Apokries” is pretty similar to the Venetian Carnevale, and even though Lefkada wasn’t going to be HUGE, it was going to get pretty populated. Decorations are up all over town, and there are info flyers up around town that have a whole schedule of upcoming events.
(It’s also probably why more and more restaurants around town are opening up — not because the summer season is starting, but because Apokries was coming.)
(Evidently all the leadup to Lent is here is about food — next week is Cheese Week.)
We did make it back out to the windmills for sunset light today — but that’s about all we did. Had a nice casual drive around town and down to Nydri before coming back, grabbing the drone, and heading over to take photos and video.
We went back into town and looked for dinner. I think both of us were actually tired of souvlaki from the same place, too tired to make it three nights in a row, so we spotted a little taverna on the main street of Lefkada Town that might have only opened back up in the last couple days. After enjoying our time (and wine) in Athens last weekend, we opted to try and reproduce it here, now that more of the restaurants in town are getting ready for visitors — got a big carafe of “barrel wine,” risotto for me and some traditional pork stew for H.
(H’s pork was delicious, almost sweet and with a bunch of baking spices.)
We’re trying to line up everything around the island we still want to do, or want to do one more time before we head out. Today we grabbed coffee, stopped out at our pulloff by Agios Nikitas, and decided to head back up to the top of the island and check out the abandoned radar station one more time.
The clouds were a lot lower today, and there was rain off in the distance. The rain was blurring the line between the sky and the sea, so when we went around some of the curvy roads, it looked like if you went off, you’d just fall forever. The radar station was as empty as the first time we visited — I don’t know why I keep expecting to find other “explorers” up there. I keep thinking it’s like the abandoned airplane on the coast of Iceland — hunted out by Instagram clout chasers for a cool photo op? Maybe not.
We left the radar station and headed south across the tops of the mountain, encountering a shepherd with a bunch of sheep near a tiny little church, and then continuing on along the winding roads and low clouds, waiting to get a glimpse down into the valleys below. The road went into a couple of villages we had never been to — Agios Ilias, with a couple VERY slender one-way roads leading through some picturesque backyards, and then Syvros, probably the last “big” town on the island.
Heading back towards Lefkada Town, we thought we might catch the sunset light along the windmills, but just missed it. We resolved to try again tomorrow.
Enjoyed being back in “our” bed back at the cottage last night. Nice cool breeze coming in. Woke up this morning and stayed curled up a little later than expected, since we need to restock the groceries today — the pantry and fridge are pretty empty.
Today was the first time I paused in the grocery store and thought “don’t go crazy, we only have a couple weeks left.” Since we’re now flying to our next destination rather than driving, it’s unlikely we’ll take a huge box of kitchen goods with us to Albania, which means that stuff like flour and sugar will stay behind — and while I’m not going to avoid buying it if I need it, I’m also not going to shrug and say “eh we’ll use it eventually” like I did back in December.
Time to catch some laundry up too — another thing that needs to happen in the next two weeks!
Abandoned our post-Athens plans of touring Mycenae on the way back, and instead took advantage of the hotel’s late check out to get a late-morning coffee before heading to pick up the new rental car. Back to Lefkada today for the last couple weeks before hitting the 90-day limit and having to leave the EU.
The idea was to take an extra day in Athens and actually do some of the things we missed in January — the museum or the Ancient Agora or something. But truth be told, my butt hurt (bus) and my knee hurt (probably also bus) and my toe hurt (gout) so I wasn’t really pushing to get moving to do anything other than get pain medication since pharmacies are closed on Sunday. That, and it was raining.
So we took it easy, enjoyed the sound of the rain from the hotel bed, and then ventured out to get some coffee once we felt confident the pharmacies were open. Armed with a new supply of naproxen, we camped out under an umbrella at Dope Coffee and ate some breakfast before the rain picked up and forced us inside to consider more coffee and reconsider even the plans we had already reconsidered.
We finally took advantage of a break in the rain to wander towards our next destination — the Ancient Agora. Having already been through Monastiraki Square pretty much every day in both trips, we decided instead to wander through some side roads into Psyrri, the neighborhood next to Monastiraki, before crossing back over Emrou Street to head towards the Agora and the Acropolis beyond it. Cool neighborhood from what we could see, old tavernas mixed with trendy cafes and a LOT of street art. We’ll definitely wander further through this area at a later date.
Crossing back over towards the entrance, we were feeling like a snack (two double-espressos finally wreaking havoc on H’s stomach) so we found a fun little place called Potato King to stop and get some fries. The basket came out with a variety of fry types, including some smiley faces that were more like kroketten from the Alt Landstuhl than an actual French fry. Definitely a great place for a snack — and it didn’t hurt that we escaped a little rain while we were there.
But by this time, it was getting past 3, and with the Agora closing at 5, we decided to get ourselves in before it got too late to actually see anything.
The big weenie in the Agora is the Temple of Hephaistos, one of the most well-preserved temple ruins in the whole city. It sits on a hill overlooking the rest of the excavated ruins, but still well below the level of the Acropolis in the distance. There’s also a museum built to resemble one of the stoas that stood in the Agora in the second century BC, as well as ruins of a number of other buildings around the grounds.
Of course, once we got right about here, ready to climb up to the Temple … it started raining again. We hung out under a tree, watching a couple of cats entertain the thoughts of approaching tourists to see if they had any snacks, and waited for the rain to let up so we could climb up to the Temple. (The ministry responsible for the parks, in their infinite wisdom, built the steps with marble in some spots, which I’m sure evokes the era of the buildings, but is dangerously slippery in this soggy condition.)
After the pause for rain, then a careful climb up a flight of stairs, then another pause again midway up for more rain, we gave up and decided to accept our wet fate and work our way around the Temple and through some of the grounds before seeking shelter one last time in the eaves of the museum building. By this time, though, the closing whistle was fast approaching, so we made our way back to the entrance.
The road that runs along the north side of the Agora is lined with restaurants facing the Agora and with a great view of both the Temple of Haphaistos and the Acroplis, so we grabbed a table at a little taverna called Diodos and ordered some snacks — tzatziki for me and potato salad for H, and some bread — and a half a liter of red wine.
The rain started decided to run past its projected finish time, and so we continued to sit, and one carafe of wine turned into a second, and sat and talked about traveling, about drinking, about the rain (which had figured out a way to soak my pantleg and shoe despite being under the table), about math, about the American busybody over my shoulder who was befriending every table around her, about the tour group that must be coming since they hustled everyone over to one side of the patio (which did finally materialize), about how our plans for next year might change so we can do more of exactly this thing.
The second carafe finally became a third as we ordered some baklava to have for dessert. The waiter also brought out a couple of small plates of what felt like panna cotta? drizzled with honey, and finally a little pitcher filled with something hot.
“You will like this,” he said, without any further information on what it might be.
He was right.
Sweet, spiced, with a definite alcohol burn to go with the physical heat of the pitcher, it was perfect for a cool, rainy night. We finally determined it was oenomelo — according to the waiter, red wine spiked with cinnamon, sugar, and amaretto. We finished it and the last 7/8ths of the last half-liter of wine, and started our way back towards our hotel.
(I did say we talked about math.)
Following the road back along the edge of the Agora, it eventually merged back into the flea market alleys around Monastiraki, and became what appeared to be the ice cream district of Athens, as there was a string of four or five different ones packed into the same side of the street — including one with a wall of flowing melted chocolate!
We have no willpower to avoid ice cream anyways, so we picked up a couple of cups of gelato from the same shop we tried last trip (Da Vinci) and enjoyed them as we strolled back.
These are the days that I love when we travel — when you let the day take you where it wants to go and you just enjoy living the experience.
Woke up with a gouty toe, but since we weren’t planning on walking much, I figured we’d be fine, I’d just stop at the pharmacy and grab some naproxen there (since we’d left our bottle back at the cottage). Unfortunately, all the pharmacies were closed, and there’s no naproxen to be found in grocery stores or gas stations here. So we resolved to take it slow.
The coffee shop didn’t open until nine this morning, though, and we wanted to err on the side of ‘too early’ this time, so we grabbed some pastries from a bakery on Monastiraki Square. We also grabbed some snacks and sodas to stave off any hungers during the event.
We were on the first bus going around, and again met another player who saw us playing and befriended us, this time an American woman who lived in Germany but was heading to the beaches here in Greece for the weekend.
Once we finally got off the bus and finished playing, we again were starving, so we grabbed up a selection of takeaway food from the little outdoor food court we found in the first trip — some Asian noodles and rice, and some pastitsio pasta in case we wanted a late night snack — and then made an early night of it to put our feet up and watch a little TV.
Fun event, and the city is a nice place to play. We agreed that, wherever the big summer event was going to occur, we’d make the trip. (Last year it was in NYC so that was easy, but it’s been in Chicago and Seattle previously, so I guess we’ll see where we head this year!)
Today was Day One of the Pokemon event in Athens. Pokemon Go has a couple big events every year, and as it’s a location-based game, it pays to play them in large urban areas, so once this one was on the calendar, we made plans to spend the weekend.
The best way to keep moving is to hop on one of the tourist busses that generally circulate in these cities. We did this in NYC last summer and it was a very successful strategy, so we planned to do the same for this one. I bought the tickets a few days ago — all we had to do was pick up the bus in Monastiraki Square at the first pick-up at 10am.
Figuring we had a little time, we grabbed breakfast at Dope Coffee, a favorite from last trip that happens to be about a hundred steps from the hotel front door. They have great cold brew and a really good cardamom bun — even though it’s not afternoon, it’s perfect fika, and that is a treat in any country.
Buuuuuut even though we turned up five minutes before the bus was supposed to arrive, we actually missed the first bus, so we didn’t get rolling around town until almost 10:30.
We spent the day riding the bus, staring at our phones as the wonders of the city passed us by again and again on the 90-minute circular tour. Funnily enough, we had a German family sit near us and the mother and daughter both also played Pokemon Go, so we picked up a couple new friends for our friends lists!
Unfortunately, though, the focus on the game made us forget (or decline) to get lunch, so by the time the event ended and we were kicked off the bus, we realized we were starving. We had walked past a taco shop last night, and H drove us on a beeline for it. After tacos and nachos and a margarita, we picked up some sodas for the hotel room and turned in for the night, resolving to be better prepared for Sunday’s part of the event.
