Greece - Day 8

In which a ring is eyed, a beach is swam in and a normally late dinner is eaten.

Today we spent some official time in Eretria. Jesse's mom and dad - the Polhemus's, were smart in taking me to their favourite shop first. The shop is called Loupon and His Dolphins. They are friends with the shop owner: Kyrilos. Why were they smart in taking me here first? Well everything here was so amazing. He had replica ancient vases and pottery, hand made jewellery, replica statues and many other high quality products. In the two weeks that would follow I did not find one store that could match the quality and assortment that this store had.

I eyed a really cool ring that Kyrilos himself made. It had an ancient coin from 450 BC embedded right into the ring. It was of a guy riding a horse and on the back would be Athena. After humming and hawing - I told Kyrilos to put it aside and I'd come back to get it on another date.

Afterwards we went to our first beach. This one is in Eretria. You can swim on either side of this strip of land. It's surprising - I realize I had never even swam in salt water before - or if I had I had forgotten how salty salt water is! The water was warm and super clear. You could see right down to your toenails! As you can see in the photo, the bottom of the tree is painted white. This was the case with almost every tree we saw in Greece. I was told that painting tree trunks white was actually an insect repellent!

I learned that in Greece, as in some other European countries, everything shuts down from 1-5pm. It's just so hot (high 30's to low 40's - dry heat). Everyone has what's called a Siesta which usually means a nice afternoon nap! Then everything opens back up around 5pm and doesn't close until 10 or 11pm. I took advantage of a little nap time and then Jesse and I played some games. We had both packed our bags with enough games to keep us busy!










That night we were invited to dinner at a restaurant in Gymnou, which was only 10 minutes away. The restuarant was up in the hills a bit so there were some great views. Dinner in Greece is never before 9pm and is often a very social thing. This was my first full meal in Greece - and it was amazing! We had Tiganopsamou (fried flat bread with cheese), Melantzanance (eggplant and tomato sauce), floryarra (fried flutes of cheese - they love cheese!) and lamb. They also drink something called Retcina which is like white wine but has a bit of sap or retsin from trees in it. Yummy.

As an aside I will say that I will be referring to things in Greek - but I will be spelling them phonetically instead of in actual Greek (as I only often heard words and didn't see them).

Before drinking from a newly poured glass, you'll often hear someone say "Yammous" which is like us saying "Cheers". Our waiter, who was the owner of the restaurant was named Tassos and he was a very excitable fellow. I couldn't understand anything he said, but he was entertaining nonetheless.