Baklava & Ouzo

Sorry I didn't post on Saturday, but here's how my day went:

Sami and I woke up around 1 p.m. after a crazy night out with the group at Gazi. We decided to go back into Plaka (downtown Athens) and do a little shopping. On our way in, we stopped at this famous bakery that is known for its authentic Greek pastries and desserts. We spent TWO and a HALF hours there! We had such a great time! Talk about indulgence.

We each had a cup of fresh, hot FILTERED coffee (very hard to find here in Greece- they mostly drink instant coffee, cappuccino, espresso, or Greek coffee which is just... gross) and we had a "sampler" of some desserts (the waitress let us choose a few that we'd like to try in a smaller portion for a fixed amount). We tried a couple of different types of baklava, and then a few other traditional Greek desserts that I could not for the life of me pronounce but they were dee-lish!

Afterwards, we shopped around Plaka a bit, did a little sight-seeing. On our way home, near the metro, there is a 5th c. A.D. archaeological Greek bathhouse sight just right in the middle of the sidewalk. Apparently, when they were building the metro, they came across this sight which was underground our current ground-level. It was pretty fantastic to see this ancient site just in the middle of the modern city as if it was just any other thing.

Saturday night, we decided as a group to stay within the main part of Athens and just go out to a couple of bars rather than to the clubbing district. We had made plans to get up at a decent hour on Sunday to go to the Flea Market in Plaka. Mary and I became friendly with one of the bartenders at the second bar we went to and he gave our table 1 euro shots of ozou (a traditional greek liquor that tastes like liquid liquorish. It's kind of yucky, in my opinion. It's fine as a shot but the Greeks sip it here like it's a soft drink). Kurt also was teaching the bartender some Michael Jackson moves after we asked the DJ to play some dancing music and so he put on MJ.