Day 29: Soaking in the warmth

Trip

Greece 2022

Location

Athens 🇬🇷

Date

September 24, 2022

We are in a neighbourhood of Athens we hadn’t explored on our first days in Greece. Not by design, simply because it was where we could find a hotel close to the center at a reasonable price. Thank you Hotel Tonight registered trademark.

We started the day at Dope, a coffee shop that has awesome cinnamon buns. The coffee was good too but the buns were great! Again we find the best places at the end of our visit!

We went from Dope to visit the Central Municipal Athens Market and challenge our perceptions of safe food handling. The fish market, other that there’s no plexiglass between you and the fish, might not mark anybody too much. But the meat market with its carcasses hanging from hooks, skins and intestines in piles on display, might get you going. Especially when you realize that not all of the stalls have refrigeration. Meandering some more around the market got us to meet spices, cheese and other food vendors with the occasional good street art.

From the market with made it to the National Archaeological Museum. And it just happened to be free museum day! While an interesting visit, the second story, dedicated almost exclusively to pottery, really didn’t speak to us. We’re still overloaded from previous pots and pot fragments museums. It did, however, give us a good excuse to head back to Dope for a second pastry and coffee to pick us up and ready our body for the day drinking at To Kafeneio (read about their fried cheese from day 2).

We chilled a little back at the hotel, enjoying the sun and warmth from the terrace before heading out to our last diner in Greece. Karamanlidika was in our sights at the beginning of the trip, but we realized too late that we needed to reserve days in advance. While we were in Santorini, Karine had the bright idea to reserve our last meal in Athens and we did. Damn was it worth it! Everything on the menu looks good and everything we had was absolutely perfect. It was a great way to close out our trip and get ready to head back home.

Well… we’ll be truly closing out our trip by stopping by Dope one last time for cinnamon buns and coffee before jumping on the metro to the airport. A big sweet and spicy bun with some jitter juice is exactly what our body needs before sitting for most of the fourteen hours trip.