Athens, Part 2
Continuing on from part 1 and there are surprisingly few photos of feta cheese, given how much I'd eaten by this point. Feta on salads, phyllo wrapped feta, honey feta toast, a sour feta pancake... the list goes on and I loved it all.
I enjoyed watching this lady add up our lunch total on the paper tablecloth. It was an unassuming restaurant selling traditional Greek food. Mostly meat dishes but they had a couple of nice vegetarian ones too.
Salep is a hot drink made from milk, sugar and flour from wild orchid tubers. I didn't try any but the orchid flavour intrigued me. Actually, this photo reminds me of something that stuck out in Greece. The cigarette smoke; it was everywhere. Cigarettes aren't overly common in Sweden (people tend to use snus instead), so going back to smoky environments was a bit of a jolt. I'd forgotten how much the smell sticks to clothes and hair!
We stumbled upon a fantastic little deli called Kolios. Me and Magda bought quite a few things in the end (chocolate and nougat for me). The shop owner kept pouring tasters of all the different liquers for us. Prunia Plum & Herb was a winner and I also really liked the mastic liquer — mastic is a resin from trees grown on the island of Chios. If you ever get the chance to try mastic ice-cream... do!
Feyrouz was one of my absolute favourite lunch spots. They had two shops on the same street — one selling Levantine street food, the other selling Levantine cakes and pastries. I feasted on the peinirli (whole grain boat shaped pie), baklava and kazan dibi (sweet and squishy milk pudding). Having one stomach was my main regret because there was so much I wanted to try.
Athens is a city of two layers: one at street level, another at roof level. Rooftop spaces are dotted all over the city for bars, restaurants, residential gardens and office terraces.
The afternoon we got to Hadrian's Arch just in time to see the last sun of the day shining on it. By the time we'd crossed over to the other side and come back, it was in the shadows.
No first time trip to Athens would be complete without visiting the Acropolis. We picked a glorious day to do so!
We were just over half way through the trip at this point. Only a few more days to soak up the sun and relaxed pace of the city. Read part 3.
