Part 1: Athens
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So I’m back from a
wonderful week in Greece with my close buddy Ellen (a.k.a. The freckle of my life)
and am pleased to announce that whilst we didn’t break any plates or yell ‘Opa!’
at any of the locals, we most definitely absorbed all of the Greek culture in
the same way that baklava will soak up a slick of honey. I thought I’d run a bit
of a recap about our seven days in this lively country and also focus on some of the Greek Cuisine I managed to stuff
into my face. That does mean no recipe for today but as this post will be in
two parts, I’ll jam one in before putting out part 2 – that ok with you? We
good? Good. Ok then without any further waffling (mmm waffles) let’s get on
with what we did (and mostly ate) in Athens! Think of this as a Feed me Seymour
Friday post but on a Monday…
…and featuring a lot more food.
Oh and its Greek
food.
From Greece.
???
Let’s begin!
Day 1
As with a lot of things in life, the beginning events of our
trip did not get off to the best of starts. An early Sunday morning (5:45 am)
flight tempted us to decide that sleeping is over-rated and for the weak and
hence we stayed up all of Saturday night.
It turns out I am
weak and sleep is highly preferred if not essential.
We arrived at Gatwick airport around midnight and the next
5-6 hours were spent surviving off of coffee, nuts and fruit. As a result, I pretty
much transformed into a squirrel on crack – a bit like Scrat out of Ice Age. To
add to the fun of being oh so very tired, the strict hand luggage measures
meant that we had to get rid of some of our toiletries so they would fit in the
airport’s plastic bags and to say that these bags were probably only big enough
to hold Donald Trump’s imagination paints an accurate picture of what little we
had to work with. Honestly, they were tiny; I had bigger bags under my eyes.
During this predicament I was also confused for a woman
(despite the beard) multiple times by the same guy. He even had the male
chauvinistic audacity to call say ‘love, that won’t all fit in’. Love!? I’ll give you ‘love’ sunshine, a load
of love straight from my Doc Martin towards your jaw line!
*takes a few moments and eats a banana*
Any-who, once we got on the plane all was good, an
attractive guy accidentally coughed in my face (my idea of a holiday romance)
and I managed to get some sleep.
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| The view from our apartment balcony :) |
When we arrived in Athens, for a brief moment everything
seemed set up to go perfectly in the sense that the weather was ideal, the
scenery was beyond picturesque and we managed to find our apartment without any
problems.
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| Happy faces - so innocently unaware... |
Unfortunately somewhere between arriving in the county and reaching
our destination, I managed to either lose my wallet or get pick-pocketed by a
crafty snitch monkey - logic or rather my lack of suggests it was the first
option. A few hours of trying to get our phones to connect with a network,
frantically using Facebook to ask the family for advice and sorting out
cancelling my cards with the bank meant that come evening all I really fancied
doing was eating (surprise, surprise) and napping. So that’s what we did and it
was one of the best naps I’ve ever had. We cooked up some tuna pasta with
whole wheat linguine, tomatoes, sweet corn, spinach, peppers and onions and it was nice
enough to put me into a good coma for the night.
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| Sometimes, basic bitch is the way to go with dinner. |
Day 2
After a brilliant night’s sleep, we awoke and had breakfast
at the apartment and if you know me, breakfast always makes me happy no matter
what predicaments have occurred the day before. The evening prior we visited
the local mini market and picked up some things for the week in order to help us
not spend all of our money on eating out at every meal. I picked up a bag of
oats which also had some cheeky dried blueberries, cranberries, goji berries
and small shavings of dark chocolate mixed in. Cheekeeeeeh! I had this for a
fair few of my breakfasts during the trip and topped it with either
strawberries or plums (or both) because fruit is all of the health. There was
also Green tea at the apartment. Praise!
We sorted out our bus tickets to Palouki for Wednesday
(after about two hours of searching for the right place to buy them – nailing
tourism) and then we went out for Lunch in Plaka at a place called Diogenes. After raving about Souvlaki in last week’s
post I decided to see how this dish was served traditionally and hence ordered
a very simple chicken souvlaki with potatoes, courgettes, peppers and carrots
(in lots of olive oil and lemon juice) – Yum! It was simplicity at its best and
surprisingly filling considering the portion was quite moderate. Plus it wasn’t
too expensive either so, triple win!
After lunch we visited the acropolis museum before braving
the ancient acropolis itself and managing to see all the ancient structures
including the magnificent Parthenon dedicated to Athena, the Erechtheion
dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon (said to be the housing place of the
mythical fountain bestowed upon the people of Athens by the God of the sea
himself), the theatre of Dionysus, the temple of Athena Nike and of course the
grand entrance - the Propylaea.
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| Athena's pad |
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| A view of the site from Areopagus Hill (the hill of Ares) - of which the climb nearly resulted in broken ankles/death |
We then explored Plaka a little more, caught a glimpse of
Hadrian’s Library because when we tourist, we tourist hard before returning our
tired feet back to our apartment in Attiki and creating what can only be
described as a carb-bowl featuring more linguine, spinach, roasted sweet potato
and a sauce made of tinned tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, onions and oregano. Complete
carbinal sin and I wasn’t even sorry.
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| A nice bit of street art in Plaka |
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| Give me those carbs! |
Day 3
On our last full day in Athens, we woke up (as you do in the
morning) and I had the standard porridge and fruit breakfast. The fact that I
actually went abroad and bought oats only reaffirms that I have a serious
addiction/problem. I just love the stodge!
Anyway we visited the temple of Olympian Zeus with its
lovely Corinthian style columns well as Hadrian’s arch before heading back into
Plaka to find somewhere to eat. It wasn’t long before found a great restaurant
with an outside seating area; it seemed rude not to try and make the most of
the sunshine as physically possible.
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| Zeus' crib |
The waiter told us that as it was
approaching Easter (a big holiday for Greek Orthodox followers) traditionally
people didn’t consume meats and dairy etc until Easter Sunday instead relying
more on vegetables, grains and fish – true Mediterranean style. We could of
course have had whatever we wanted off of the menu regardless but I decided to
go full on Greek and sample a culinary favourite, calamari stuffed with rice
and vegetables served alongside some paprika potatoes, mixed leaves and an
aubergine salad. It was probably one of the best things I ate this holiday and
despite being Ellen’s idea of a nightmare on a plate – she doesn’t like whole
seafood #hecklethefreckle - it was my idea of heaven.
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| Yep, the squid came whole |
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| Wait are we in Greece or LA? |
After this brilliant meal, we explored the beautiful
National Gardens with its seemingly abandoned ‘zoo’ and escapee tortoises
before going back to the apartment, getting all jazzed up and then returning to
the restaurant Diogenes for a full three course Greek extravaganza! We snacked
on olives with bread and tzatziki to start with before I attacked an entire
grilled Sea Bream with steamed vegetables whilst Ellen took down the souvlaki
and finally we shared a piece of apple pie and a traditional piece of Greek
walnut ‘pie’ (it was more like a kind of cinnamon spiced carrot cake minus the
carrot) all alongside some ice cream.
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| Loving the fish, this holiday |
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| The sweetest thing since that picture of a tiny pig in boots |
I am definitely a pudding-kind of guy but
as the walnut pie/cake was saturated in honey, it was a tad bit sweet even for
me. If you get off on a sugar rush though, then this is the dessert for you. We
took a final stroll around the streets before getting some views of the
Acropolis all lit up against the night sky. It was the perfect way to end our
brief but thorough visit to this brilliant city and despite being assaulted by
a stray cat during dinner, I’m quite sure that Ellen would wholeheartedly
agree.
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| I should definitely be a professional photographer ... |
However, even though our time in Athens was over, it was by
no means the end of the holiday. Our next destination would take us to a much
more rural setting (literally the middle of nowhere) where we’d encounter the
ruins of Olympia, a completely abandoned beach and wonderfully loud woman
bearing cookies… cookies! But I’ll leave that for the next post.
See you next time or as the Greeks would say Antio! (Disclaimer: My Greek sucks. Greece will testify this).
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