Wednesday 30 November 2016

Sand Castles and Sardines

On Sunday we left Greece after what has been an unexpected, fascinating and wonderful month. Ed’s sister Alex and Dad David have been out to visit and we have enjoyed showing them some of our favourite spots as well as visiting some new places.
Enjoying a Thess sunset...
...with a coffee
The day before Alex’s arrival we explored the old town up on the hill and decided to visit Thessaloniki’s zoo. We’re not quite sure what has happened to the zoo, but its population consisted of some deer, a flock of sheep, some rogue goats stood on top of a shed, and confusingly, pigeons in a cage. It was unclear whether they had broken in or had been put there by design. There was also a solitary pelican, living in a pond with a large number of ducks. Most of the enclosures were empty and it was a rather sad place, clearly the money had run out some time ago. We did pick up a stray kitten however, who followed us round the entire time and even to our car. It took a lot of will power not to take her with us and smuggle her back to England!


Cutest cat ever
Finding very little to excite us in the old town, we drove east and miraculously found a parking space near recommended restaurant Olive and Lemon and had an excellent lunch of meat skewers.

Postprandial tooth pick
The next day Al arrived and we took her straight to Perea for a slap up fish lunch at our favourite restaurant. Instead of sea bass we ordered three Dorades, along with the obligatory enormous Greek salad and some fried courgettes. These underwhelming vegetables are transformed (like most things) when encased in a delicious tempura batter and we proceeded to order them in virtually every restaurant we’ve visited since.


Several fishy on a dishy
Once Ed’s Dad had arrived, we all bundled into the car and spent one of the most enjoyable days of our trip on the beach at Halkidiki. The temperature was about 17 degrees, but the water was still clement so we all went for a swim (except Charlie, who though better of going any further than up to his waist). We played frisbee and did some underwater filming with the go pro, which will no doubt be cropping up on a film in December. 

It was beautifully sunny and we set up our camping table and had a picnic of cheese pastries, tzatsiki, aubergine dip and Greek salad. Sadly Ed was suffering from a bout of toothache and had an impressively swollen gum. Happily Greek pharmacies let you buy antibiotics over the counter so he dosed himself up on those and a load of painkillers (luckily Dr. Cross was with us). After we’d built an impressive sand castle complex with Charlie, the sun slipped behind the hills and the temperature seemed to drop about ten degrees. We suddenly found ourselves in wet swimming costumes on a freezing beach so we deployed our faithful thermos of coffee and made a hasty retreat to the car with the heating on full blast. 
Could be July frankly if it weren't for the Greek person in a bomber jacket and scarf out of shot.
We drove back to Thessaloniki and ate at a well-known fish restaurant in the eastern district of Kalamaria. We wouldn’t have got a table on a Saturday night, only we arrived at 7pm, which is at least two hours before any self-respecting Greek person would think of having dinner, so they squeezed us in. We all shared a delicious whole grilled Kingfish along with, guess what, another mountain of fried courgettes. Ed also realised that in terms of treating toothache, gargling with ouzo is by far the most effective medication and managed to get through about a bottle by himself in this pursuit. 


On Alex’s last day we ate at Estrella, a brunch place that had been recommended to us by our airbnb hosts as well as a random woman in the street, who took it upon herself to tell us to eat there apropos of nothing. Maybe she works for them?! It was actually a little like being in Hackney again – eating eggs on toast surrounded by people much younger and more beautiful than you. Katie ordered a dish that came with ’64 degree eggs’, presumably referring to the cooking temperature. These were a real misfire and were milky and cold. Blurgh. We found it a bit try hard and not a patch on some of the more authentic eateries the city has to offer. 

God these weird eggs are boring
For example, we have recently discovered a meze restaurant in the covered market, which is absolutely superb, so much so we visited it two nights running. Some of the dishes would not have been out of place in Barrafina or Jose’s (our two favourite tapas haunts in London). We paritcularly enjoyed the cod’s roe tarama, octopus cooked in squid ink and red wine (this was divine) and fried sardines served in the skillet. Service was fantastically friendly, a seafood bisque arrives on the table when you sit down, without being requested (or charged for) and the same goes for the raki after the meal is finished – they just leave the bottle on the table. When such a good meal with gallons of wine comes to just £30 you know you’re onto a good thing.

With Ed’s Dad here we have been visiting some of the archeological sites. Ed and Charlie took David to see the ruins at Dion and to visit Mount Olympus. Eerily, while they were there, someone set off a load of flares from Mount Olympus and it was as if Zeus himself was chucking down lightning bolts at us mere mortals. This has rather fuelled Charlie’s imagination and we are pretty sure he thinks the Greek Gods are real. David has been reading to him from an exhaustive, but incredibly dry treatise on the Greek myths by (the generally brilliant) Robert Graves, published in 1912, although we hope he skipped over the more unsavoury bits like Oedipus accidentally killing his father and marrying his mother. 

Actual proof that Greek Gods EXIST
The most impressive of all the sites was Vergina, the place where King Phillip II of Macedonia (or Val Kilmer to us) was buried, along with some other important people.
 
Macedonian royal family
Their tombs were uncovered in the 1970s and it has all now been developed into an impressive museum, containing the artifacts discovered within them (think blingy gold crowns). The whole place was beautifully done and up together. Most Greek archeological sites are presided over by at least five members of staff all chain-smoking next to the no smoking signs and doing absolutely nothing else other than following you around like you might be planning to rob the joint (not unreasonable after we pulled that trick with the Elgin Marbles). Not so at Vergina. The museum sits beneath the mound of earth containing the tombs and around the tombs themselves, so you walk into the hill. We also managed to piggy-back on an English speaking tour, which really illuminated the whole thing. Obviously Charlie was bored witless and all this visiting tombs brought up the Death Conversation again (while we were in Dion, Charlie saw a dead cat and we had to have an extensive conversation about death and explain that all people die and it’s the one thing we know will happen to us. Heavy).
Charlie thinking about serious stuff
Greece was brilliant. It could even be our favourite country so far. This month didn’t end up being quite what we expected, but that’s actually been a positive. The weather has been amazing (it’s rained once) and we have swum in the sea in November!
Good old Thess waterfront
Greek pirate ship
Greek people are lovely and Charlie has milked the situation for all it is worth. One evening we walked into what can only be described as a dessert emporium – row upon row of tiny beautiful cakes and pastries. We were hardly through the door and a waiter had performed the obligatory cheek-pinch and thrust a chocolate biscuit into Charlie’s little paw. We don’t know how he does it.
A cake young sir?
One of our most enduring memories of Greece will be the totally mad driving. You will never see hazard-warning lights deployed with such wanton abandon – they are literally a license to do whatever you want. We’re not sure what the Greek driving test consists of, but if you own a fluffy dice, you probably automatically pass.


We imagine a Greek driving handbook reads as follows:


- Fancy double or triple-parking on a dual carriage way while you saunter off for a coffee? Stick your hazard lights on and go for it!
- Don’t have time to wait at a red light? Flash your hazards and then creep through.

- Lorry driver in need of a wee or a kip? Just stop on the motorway’s slow lane (hazards on obvs.) Everyone will swerve around you.

- And motor cyclists – you don’t need to wear a helmet, just sling it over the handlebars.


However, the longest lasting memory of Greece will in fact be Katie’s hair. In a fit of madness and nostalgia, she decided it would be a good idea to go red again. She got a bit carried away with an over-enthusiastic hairdresser who was already sporting her own garish shade and was persuaded to go for a colour that could only be described as adventurous. At the final reveal, all the other hairdressers in the salon downed tools and gathered round saying things like ‘wow, new you!’ eagerly eying her to see if there would be tears. As Katie was leaving the hairdressers, a stray dog started barking at her. Ed gallantly said it looked nice, but nevertheless, walking past shop windows is now a deeply shocking experience. But it will really annoy Katie’s parents which probably makes it all worth it in the end.

On Sunday morning we began heading home, via a 2,700km drive through eight countries (Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Belgium and France). We planned to spend a couple of nights in Belgrade, a night in Ljubljana, a few nights in Sonthofen in Southern Germany, probably finishing with a night somewhere like Cologne, then making a mad dash for the coast, a ferry and a pork pie as soon as we hit the white cliffs of Dover. 

On Saturday, the day before we left, we had a quick chat about the journey by way of preparation. It suddenly dawned us that neither Macedonia or Serbia are in the EU (something we should frankly get used to). This means our car insurance didn't cover us, so we spent a panicked two hours researching alternative routes back through Italy or via Bulgaria and Romania (and although we were keen to meet Vlad the Impaler on a dark country road, it would have added serious mileage to our journey). 

Then after some internet sleuthing we discovered we might be able to buy a third party insurance 'green card' at the border to cover us while we drove through. Sounds dodgy and it probably is, but 50 euros and some very careful driving later, we made it through the lawless non-European hinterlands and are safely back in bona fide insurance zone. Mind you, we thought the game might be up at the Serbian border, when they requested our vehicle registration certificate, which is safely filed (at an unknown location) in the UK. We managed to bamboozle the border official by handing them a folder with all our MOT and service receipts for the last 13 years. After about 20 minutes they got bored and sent us on our way.   

We've visited Belgrade (probably the new Berlin - you heard it here first) and Ljubljana (chocolate box) and we're now in Sonthofen, Germany, looking forward to a couple of days R&R, eating wurst and drinking beer.

No comments:

Post a Comment