Athens Day 2 PM
Our afternoon tour was a food walking tour. We had a 20 minute walk down some very narrow cobblestone streets that had some interesting shops, many cafes and of course some junk souvenir shops. I wish we had more time to visit some of the shops, especially one that had some beautiful hand made shoes. As we walked down the streets we found that cars and motorcycles in Athens pay little attention to pedestrian streets or the people walking in them.
We met up with our guide in Monastiraki Square. Our tour group was an eclectic group, David and me from NY, three mid-thirty couples from Florida who mostly work in bars, and a man and his adult son from England, We had 6 different eating stops and a walk though an open air meat, fish and fruit market. And we did a lot more walking
Our trip though the open air market came midway though the tour. It was interesting but didn’t necessarily make your mouth water. In the fish section there were many stall of people selling different types of seafood. If you buy sardines or anchovies, you get a paper cone and you get to fill it yourself by hand. In the meat section we learned that nothing goes to waste on the animals as you can see from the photos which is admirable, but not too appetizing at least for me. They did have some wonderful looking mean but they also had cow and pig body parts including cow testicles. I’ll leave it to you to decide what picture they are in. The outdoor section of the market had some great looking fruits, which we got to try, vegetables, spices, olives and nuts.
We did enjoy a lot of great food and fun time with our tour friends. We tried savory and sweet Greek pizza, which is nothing like pizza we are used to, Greek donuts, Greek coffee, Greek tapas with a side of Ouzo, Greek wine, a tasking of greek vinegars, olive oils, feta and olives and souvlaki. The pita on souvlaki was out of this world Our guide was great and it looked like everyone had a great time.
By the time we were done we were pretty exhausted but decided to walk the 20 minutes back to the hotel where we picked up a drink at the bar and headed ot the room for a shower. Tomorrow we are off to our cruise ship. for 10 days on the Mediteranean Sea.