We signed up for foodie tour in Athens which was better than I expected. We went to Central Market, spice shops, cheese and pastry shops, tasted local wines, yogurt and koulourakia which is a like a pretzel with sesame seeds and no salt, had Greek coffee and loukoumades. Ended up at a liitle no name local dive for a variety of foods.
Found a little spice shop with a line of locals waiting to buy their spices. We loaded up on oregano and other spices.
Burke is all about eating meat and not much else so this shop was a treat. The hanging sausages are dried meat and very good.
The food prices in Athens are cheap. Why is our food so expensive when our fuel costs are a 1/3 of Greece? Beautiful olives are 4e for a kilo. That is $2.47 a pound compared to $10 a pound at home.
The meat market was a bit disgusting. Most of butchers handling meat without gloves, smoking cigarettes. Just didn’t whet my appetite for meat but the food is so good when it comes to the table that you say “what the heck!”.
Dora Stratou Folk Dance
Bill and I went to an evening performance of the Dora Stratou Folk Dance group. Setting was an outdoor stage in a wooded venue on Philopappo Hill. A bit of rain threatened to ruin the performance but it passed to leave a cool Greek summer night.
They had a small orchestra playing beautiful folk music with two female vocalists. One was up there in years and could only sit to sing. Costumes and dances represented different regions of Greece.
We really enjoyed this performance. A great value and different way to spend an evening. One observation I had was that the dances our kids do for our Pensacola Greek Festival are more complex and just as good as this professional group. Their music was far better with clarinet, drums, mandolin, keyboard etc.
Links to Videos
Took these with my Android phone at night – not bad.
http://youtu.be/PiHEFO-n_iE