Is That You, Baklava?

June 23, 2019

Greece has been on my list forever, and I’ve finally made it happen! I’m writing this while sitting on a couch in a gorgeous AirBNB in Athens, having just stuffed my face with some absolutely delicious food. More on that in a bit.

First, I will say that I have been up for 27 hours straight at this point, so there is an absolute guarantee that some if not most of this post will be a) incoherent, b) rude or c) all of the above.

And I think we all know that “c” is always the right answer.

Enough if that, I’m going to section this jazz off because i’m fading quickly, so here we go:

The Airport

I got there early, sat and enjoyed some delicious meat from Caplansky’s to kill the time, and then sat some more after some previous sitting and more future sitting.

During all of this joyous sitting I had the pleasure of listening to a 2-year-old scream for as many hours as years she’s been alive. Now, I have many a friend with kids, and I know that the following will likely annoy / anger / alarm / enrage them, but I felt I had no choice but to send this text to my father as a descriptor of what was happening in my pre-trip life.

Not to worry, no children were harmed in the boarding of that plane.

Once we got on the plane I quickly realized that even the fancy seat I bought wasn’t going to cut it in allowing me to sleep, because I was simply too long for even the reclining bed chair thingy. Cool beans, glad I saved up all that extra money.

The good news is that the space was kind of cool and the food was great!

There was cheese and beef and chicken and tuna and veggies and lettuce, yum! I passed on dessert and booze and just enjoyed some of the movies they had on the little TVs.

The Greece Arrival

Look, I’m sure there was a lot more that happened in the 14 hours of travel, but it's either not important enough to mention here, or was captured in that text message to Pops. So, let’s move on to my arrival in Athens!

I looooove the AirBNB that I’m in, and feel that if you’re ever here, you must stay at this place! It is gorgeous and it's in such a fun neighbourhood, with a delicious restaurant literally next door (was in fact the main place that a friend told me I just had to try, and I looked that magic up and I had already booked right next to it!).

First I did some waking around and saw some great street art and just a jumble of random.

Food Time!

This is from the place nearby. Look at it and say nothing. If some drool slips out of your mouth, just own it.

The first is a portobello mushroom, cheese and meat extravaganza, and the second is a pork steak with potatoes and a delicious cucumber salad.

Now, what came next was very out of character for me, given that I have not eaten sugar (except fruit) for the last 1.5 years.

That means that I have not had a dessert other than fruit in 1.5 years. That seems insane to me when I read it back!

Well that all changed tonight! And it was in fact not baklava, but dare I say it was even better?

DARE I?

Yeah, I do dare.

The best way I can describe this dessert is to say that it was essentially a mix of all of the smiles you’ve ever had on your face mixed with drooling and regret.

In actual fact, it was a combination of banana, cream, crumble (think of the best apple crumble topping you can imagine) all middled by some form of sugar dream sauce / custard.

I don’t think that’s succinct enough a title to make it on the menu, but it's pretty damned accurate.

I enjoyed it but was made pretty aware immediately that flooding your system with sugar like that after 1.5 years is less Intelligent than one might have hoped. Let's be honest, I knew it was going to jack me up and then I’d crash, but I hadn’t considered those 27 hours without sleep…

And on that note, this lady need to rest, because tomorrow brings more adventure, and my body has some serious sugar solving to do before then!

Tata’s for now!