Athens: final city on this adventure

Phillip and I arrived in Athens, Greece, two days ago. Athens is the final city to visit on our adventure that began on April 11 with our departure from home.  Athens is preparing us for summer in Texas; the high temperature here yesterday and today: 104 degrees. Although Athens has a lot of sights to see, we returned to our air-conditioned hotel room by 1 pm because it is just too hot and the streets are too crowded to be out and about. The main item to see, but not via a tour inside, was the Acropolis, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We walked about three blocks south from our hotel and began to see the Acropolis over the buildings and trees.

north side of the Acropolis and Parthenon

Before arriving at steps that would take us closer to the Acropolis, we came to the ruins of Hadrian's Library.

Hadrian's Library, built AD 132

The Acropolis is a complex of buildings, including the Parthenon, on a high plateau. The word "acropolis" means "highest city," and different buildings have existed on the mountain since even before the Greeks erected the famous ones that we celebrate today. As we walked closer, we encountered something we've found all around the Balkans... stairs. 

We had excellent views of Athens as we climbed our way up and around the mountain, including a view of a fortress in the distance on another hill.

Phillip and I got as close as we could to the structures on the Acropolis, but that meant also going down the mountain on the east side. 

Phillip letting faster travelers go ahead of us on the stairs down

The access on the east side put us close to the Acropolis's structures. 

The entrance to visit the Acropolis was on the south side. A few thousand of our closest friends were there, waiting in lines. We did not get a ticket to wait a few hours in the sun to walk inside and wander around in the sun. We were happy to take photos from outside and below the Acropolis. 

We continued around the exterior and found Areopagus Hill, free access up a metal staircase to an area to get pictures of the Acropolis and the structures on it, such as the Parthenon. The Parthenon (constructed during the 5th century BC) is a temple dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom and war and namesake of Athens.

view of Acropolis from Areopagus Hill

We could also see more ruins in the distance. 

We walked the entire circumference of the Acropolis, sometime close to the mountain, sometimes a distance away. It wasn't terribly hot yet, so we continued exploring Athens. Heading for the Olympic stadium, we walked thru a park, missing the park exit that I'd planned to take. The exit we did take put us on the street at the back entrance of the presidential palace just as the ceremonial guards were moving on the sidewalk. From a shaded low wall, we watched for about fifteen minutes:

These two guards were monitored by a real guard in camo clothes across the street. 

The uniformed guards completed their choreographed steps which included a return to their guard posts.

We later saw six ceremonial soldiers making the same exaggerated leg movements at the Greek Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but since we had seen it while sitting in the shade at the palace, we didn't stand in the sun to watch them. With these guards in the shade at their guard post, we continued on to the Panathenaic Stadium, the site of the first modern Olympic games in 1896. 

During this Balkans trip, we walked down the 1984 Olympic bobsled run. On previous adventures, we went to the 1972 Munich Olympic venues, and we've been to the Lausanne, Switzerland, Olympic Museum. 

Today, we walked to other ancient Greek locations. We saw a structure in the distance from Areopagus Hill, so we found it today, the Temple of Hephaestus. 

Temple of Hephaestus

We passed the ruins of the wells that were below the Acropolis, with archeologists currently working there.

archaeologists at work

As in other cities, specifically Sofia, Bulgaria, and its Roman ruins, ancient ruins were unearthed when the subway and modern buildings were built. 

ancient Greek ruins at an office building

Since this is my last post for this trip, a few Greek food pictures and a story. 

On our first evening in Athens, we were looking for a grocery store to buy snacks and wine for our hotel room. While out, we stopped for dinner at a sidewalk restaurant on a minor street. Our waitress only spoke a few words of English, but she chattered to us in Greek as if we understood. We each ended up with this delicious plate of gyro pork on top of pita bread with the tzatziki sauce, tomatoes and onions to make our gyros. And French fries! Our second night, we went to a different restaurant, and I got a Greek salad, since we were in Greece...

Tonight, we returned to the same gyro restaurant as our first night and the waitress remembered us. She again spoke extensively to us in Greek, and we just smiled and nodded. Instead of the huge plate of food, we each ordered just the gyro sandwich, which was still too much food. I ordered wine, asking for red wine, but the waitress apparently said the white wine was better or maybe white went better with the gyro. In any event, I ended up with delightful white wine, in a chilled blue metal cup which she showed me to pour into the shot glass to drink. I've never been served or consumed wine from a tin cup and shot glass before.

Tomorrow, we fly home with a four-hour flight to London followed by a ten-hour flight to DFW. We are scheduled to arrive around 8:30 pm. Our bodies will think it is 4:30 am, so our goal is to stay awake as much as we can on the flight so we sleep at home as late as we can. I expect a few days of off-schedule sleep as we overcome the jet lag. 

Phillip and I have enjoyed this trip. At 2-1/2 months, it has been our longest. I was concerned before we left about not scheduling and booking hotels beyond Italy, but everything worked out well. We had internet at each hotel, and I always had cellular internet access as a back-up so I could book one city ahead as we traveled. A few tips about traveling in the Balkans:

-When traveling by bus, verify the bus drop-off point as well as the pick-up point (refers to our 2-mile hike to town for our first Shkodar, Albania stay)

-Paper ticket is the rule for bus travel. We always got a paper bus ticket because we bought them at the bus station, usually the day before we needed them. We saw other travelers who only had an on-line ticket then had to pay again to get a paper ticket before they could get on the bus.
-Spelling of city names changes. Shkoder is the same as Shkodar, Shkodra, and Skodra. 
-Public restrooms, especially at bus and train stations, will charge for use, from a high of 1.2 euros ($1.40) in Italy to 0.30 euro ($0.35) in Kosovo. The average charge is the equivalent of US fifty cents. They could be called toilets, toluates, or WCs (water closet, most common designation) but all use the standard male and female figures to differentiate them. 
-Beer is cheaper than water. In Italy, wine is cheaper than water.
-Espresso is the standard coffee. "Americano" coffee if offered is probably espresso and water. Brewed coffee as we know it is a rarity.

- Check suitcase wheels regularly. I did, so we had no problems during this trip, but we have gotten trash in the wheels on previous trips. I'll still need new handle-side wheels when we return as the cobblestones have done a number of the plastic wheel mounts. 
- Google maps are 2-D. The world is 3-D. I noticed this time that Google sometimes indicated, in itsy bitsy print, that my trip had an elevation change of X feet. This notation, however, only appeared when I input a walk up a mountain to a fortress. It did not tell me that we would be rolling our suitcases up a hill or carrying them up flights of stairs. 
And my final tip, one from every other trip as well:

-Nice people are everywhere. Talk to people, smile with them, and you will get so much happiness in return and will learn so much. In Trieste, Italy, I took a picture for a woman of her and her companions on the boardwalk. She was from Novi Sad, just north of Belgrade. We struck up a conversation and when she heard that we were going to visit Belgrade, she invited us to visit her in Novi Sad. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to Novi Sad, but it was a nice offer. Conversing with our hotel clerks was wonderful. Two separate times, the clerk gave us treats for our trip. Another time the clerk gave us extra cokta (more than the hotel's standard offering for its guests). We didn't chat with them for the treats, but to be friendly and learn from them. From the Sarajevan hotel clerk we learned that Sarajevans wish the city would require that the war's bullet holes be patched in the residential areas. They understand the war remnants left in the central city but would rather that the neighborhoods be allowed to move on after twenty years. The young Egyptian couple on the Kotor boat tour were very nice with a modern outlook on life. The Greek waitress (I think she and her husband owned the restaurant) was full of joy when we returned to her restaurant and it didn't matter that we couldn't speak the same language, she was just bubbly and happy. 

We look forward to our next adventures! We have five cruises booked and will begin planning our next land travel. Perhaps a return to SE Asia, perhaps Africa and a photo safari. We'll see!

 

More Balkan Food and our Albanian Cooking Class

I've been collecting food pictures for a second food-centric post and now is the time as Phillip and I finally were able to attend a cooking class yesterday. My earlier food post covered eating and drinking in our first four countries (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina), so I'll be starting this one with Serbian food. One of the common and tastiest foods was this simple tomato salad. The tomatoes throughout the Balkans tasted like the ones I grew, real tomatoes, not the cardboard ones from the grocery store. The cheese on the tomatoes was not as tangy as feta but had more flavor and texture than cream cheese. No dressing, just some green onions more as a garnish. 

Serbians know how to perfectly cook beef liver as well. We think this was sauteed in salted butter for exactly the right length of time. Delicious (for those who like liver!)

I've shown cevapi, the minced meat uncased sausages in the previous food post, but in Bulgaria, we had the minced meat formed into patties. This was pork, with a different seasoning than cevapi, no cumin flavor in the background. It was served with perfectly crisped sweet potato fries and tzatziki (yogurt, grated cucumber, dill) sauce.

Also in Sofia, we stopped at a cafeteria for lunch. Phillip had a chicken stew and I had Bulgarian moussaka, made with potatoes instead of eggplant but still with the traditional bechamel-type sauce. I ordered beet salad to go with it. The beet salad was grated raw beets so I did need to add some oil and vinegar to make it an actual salad. 

On to Skopje, North Macedonia, and back to cevapi. Throughout the Balkans, the cevapi was served with the red avjar sauce and with chopped onions.  

and beans and sausage for Phillip:

We didn't spend much time in Prizren, Kosovo, and one of the days we were there was a national holiday, so we were limited to restaurants in the more touristy area. Phillip had pizza, which was just like pizza anywhere. Prizren had restaurants that claimed to serve Mexican food, so I tried their chicken fajitas. It was strips of grilled chicken, onions, and peppers, but they missed on the fajita seasoning. Also, two of those bowl of sauce were mayonnaise-based sauces and the red one was pureed avjar, not salsa. Edible, but certainly not Mexican!

In Montenegro, we had the best desserts in Podgorica, for free. We ate dinner in our hotel because the view from the terrace was so good. We struck up a conversation with the waiter on our arrival day as we were eating early and were his only customers. He had spent several years as a waiter on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship so we had a great time talking with him. He noticed me writing in my journal because I had to move it when he brought my beer. On our final evening, he brought a lady over to speak with us. She was the hotel's general manager. Nice conversation with her, then she left to attend to business and our waiter brought us complimentary desserts from her, apple pie and chocolate cake. Phillip like the chocolate cake, but the apple pie was the standout for me. The texture of the crust was between a flaky American pie crust and the inside of a croissant. The apples were soft but not mushy, flavored with a bit of cardamom along with cinnamon.  

In Kotor, we had just one meal that was something different from grilled chicken or a green salad and that was when we made a meal of the appetizer plate. Prosciutto was outstanding as was the tomato. The highlights, however, were the cheeses, especially that scoop of what looks like butter. It was a buttery cream cheese that was delicious on the freshly baked bread.

Moving on to Budva, we again had great hotel food. Phillip ordered chicken and roasted potatoes and got half a chicken! Tender and juicy, bigger than a Cornish game hen, but small enough that he was able to eat it all without having eaten too much food.

Those roasted potatoes that came with his chicken were my favorite so he shared them with me that day. The next time we ate there, I had a caprese roll and a side order of those roasted potatoes. The potatoes were baby Yukon gold (or their version of that), boiled then deep fried with a sweet paprika coating. Crunch exterior, soft inside, perfectly seasoned. And my caprese roll looks like a flour tortilla around tomato and basil. It was not a tortilla; it was a sheet of mozzarella cheese encasing the tomatoes and basil with a balsamic glaze drizzled over the insides before they rolled it.

Now to Albania, the country we are in currently. In Shkoder, we went several times to a restaurant recommended by our hotel staff. Excellent beans and sausage for Phillip, but I ordered the traditional platter consisting of a cabbage roll, a layered pastry-like something (my least favorite on the plate), a stuffed pepper, a stuffed eggplant (my favorite), roasted potatoes and mixed roasted vegetables. The center held a bowl of cheesy, avjar-flavored spread that went well with the veggies. 

Another day in Shkoder, we ordered a platter that we shared because it was so much food. Five kinds of meat: sliced smoked sausage, cevapi, a patty of seasoned ground meat, three pieces of grilled chicken, and grilled hot dogs (that tasted just like American hot dogs), cheese, and an entire plate of French fries. Note the black dog to the right of the French fries. He was a good boy who just laid beside the table and thumped his tail on the ground when we spoke to him. He got a few of those hot dogs after we ate our fill of the food. 

Here in Tirana, we ate once at our hotel but were not a fan of the food as it seemed greasy. I found a restaurant about a kilometer away that had good reviews, and it lived up to the reviews. Phillip, now a connoisseur of Balkan baked beans, enjoyed their version, made with large lima beans and chunks of sausage. 

I ordered a pepper casserole and a pickled cabbage salad. Delicious, but not what I was expecting. The cabbage was a cross between fresh cabbage and sauerkraut (I like both those things). I thought the pepper casserole was red peppers and cheese, until we went to our cooking class yesterday and I learned how the sauce is made. No cheese. More on that when I walk thru the class. The casserole was also delicious.

We looked on-line for a cooking class in each city we visited. I did not find one until here in Tirana, learning to cook three Albanian dishes, a traditional main dish, their version of burek, and a dessert. Eleven students with the others from the Netherlands, Sweden, Scotland, and England. Sindhi, our instructor, spoke excellent English and ensured that all the students were hands-on during the class. She provided unlimited home-made wine (her father makes it at his home in southern Albanian). 

We started preparing the main dish, tave kosi, first as it had to cook longest in the oven. Phillip was on meat-chopping duty. Boiled beef, which he is carrying to be covered with sauce. I was on sauce duty, and here's where I learned how to make that traditional sauce that covered the peppers and that will cover this meat. Butter and flour to make a roux, add water from boiling the beef. Add yogurt followed by eggs for thickening it even more. Seasoned with paprika and garlic powder. We whisked the sauce until it came to a boil and thickened, then it was ladled onto the meat in those ceramic dishes, fully covering the meat pieces. As it cooked in the oven, the sauce got even thicker, so it seemed like cheese when finished! One of the students was vegetarian, so we also made a meatless version with red peppers and a different sauce. Phillip got to stir the sauteing peppers. 

With the tave kosi in the oven, we worked on the Albanian burek. It did not use filo dough, rather we made the dough ourselves, so it was thicker than filo. 

The filling was spinach and cheese. We chopped and cooked the water out of the spinach before adding a feta-type cheese to fill the burek. This is a pie-shaped burek, with the filling between two layers of the dough we made. Phillip is crimping the edges before it went in the oven to bake.

We also made Albanian cookies. Not a lot of sugar in the dough because they were drenched with a cinnamon sugar water solution after baking.

The tave kosi came out of the oven to cool while the burek baked.

When the burek came out of the oven, Sindhi sprinkled each with a bit of water then covered them with a towel to soften the crust.

And our food was all finished, so it was time to eat the fruit of our labors! The tave kosi, with its yogurt-bechamel type sauce, tasted like it was covered with a cheesy sauce. The bowl with red-colored food in it to the left is the vegetarian main dish, red bell peppers in a sauce. All delicious, especially with the wine! 

Phillip and I had a great time with a wonderful instructor and really pleasant classmates. We will make the tave kosi at home, but I think I'll find out how to make the northern Balkans burek with the filo dough, as we like that better than Albanian burek. 



 

 

Albanian Highlights, so far

Phillip and I are in Tirana, Albania, our second Albanian city. Before we left Shkoder, Albania, we took an all-day tour to Theth National Park, traveling about 50 miles northwest of Shkoder in a van with a guide, Renalto, and five other visitors. Renalto drove from Shkoder into the Albanian Alps, with our first stop at the highest point in Albania. 

view thru the Albanian Alps from the high point

At that viewpoint, we saw structures built over the road. Renalto said they were to slow down rockslides and to protect cars during avalanches in the winter. 

structures over the road in rockslide/avalanche areas

Our route took us under the structures. The road had dozens of switchbacks as we traveled up and down the mountains. In addition to maneuvering the switchbacks, Renalto had to be alert for animals.

one of the cows walking on the road 

The highlight of the trip was our walk to Theth's Blue Eye, a pool of blue water in the mountain. The six-mile hike (climb!) began across the river from where Renalto parked our van, in the village of Nderlysaj. The picture is Renalto leading us across a walk bridge made of wooden slats. Phillip and I were enough ahead of the rest of our group as we crossed the bridge, that he, behind me, started bouncing on the bridge. When I heard him giggling as I frantically grabbed the handrails, I realized what was happening. 

Once we began the climb up the mountain, and it was quite a climb, Phillip didn't kid around with me but made sure I was OK as the path became narrow and high. 

view back toward our start, but only about 1/5 of the way to Blue Eye

Our trek took us up and down a walking trail. The site I booked the tour on called it "moderate." Another site called it "moderately challenging." I guess if you are 35 years old and in excellent physical condition, it may indeed be only "moderate." For two 67-year-olds, in decent but not great shape, it was strenuous. We did make it and saw Theth's Blue Eye. 

Blue Eye: some visitors swam, the water was 7 degrees C, 44 degrees F

About 2/3 of the way on the trail, a man in a small shack sold bottles of water, quite reasonable at 100 lek ($1.15) each; we would have paid much more for it! We had seen piles of horse manure on our climb up the mountain. On our way back, we saw the maker of the piles who was also the transport for the water:

carried the water up the mountain trail

As we returned to the trailhead, we noticed the skies began to darken to our north. At the bottom, looking back toward where we had been, we could see rain. 

Just as we made it to a covered resttaurant area near the trailhead, the rain began. While we ate lunch, the rain continued. Renalto drove to our next stop, a waterfall, but the rain had made it unsafe for us to clamber down the hill to the waterfall, so we had to skip it. We stopped at a church where a priest in olden times had created the Albanian language. Some of our fellow travelers went into the church, but we didn't. Renalto turned the van back toward Shkoder, retracing the route up into the Albanian Alps and back down toward town. 

A boulder on the narrow mountain road

The Theth tour was the best activity we did in Shkoder. The day after the tour, we took the bus to Tirana, the capital city of Albania. Five euro ($5.75) per person for a two-hour bus ride! We did splurge once we arrived at the Tirana bus station for a taxi ($17) to our hotel (20-minute drive). The bus station area was under construction and walking to the city bus stop to continue via bus would have been very hot, dusty, crowded, and stressful. 

Our hotel is about a kilometer north of the city's center, Skanderbeg Square (Skanderbeg was the Albanian military commander who led the successful rebellion against Ottoman rule in the 1400s). While I was in school and college, Albania, under their leader, Enver Hoxha, was as closed as North Korea is today. In the years since his death in 1985, Albania has really opened up and welcomed international investment and interest. Phillip and I saw this in the buildings and construction viewed from Skanderbeg Square:

It looks like a face!

Tricolor high-rise building

Today, we rode the city bus (40 lek =$0.47, per person, for a 32-minute bus ride) to the cable car that took us up the nearby mountain. No fortress at the top, only views. The best views, however, were from the cable car as we ascended and descended the mountain.

bunkers in the mountainside, viewed from the cable car

Tirana city in the distance

good supports!

another bunker seen in the hillside seen during cable car descent

In the same neighborhood as the cable car's lower station was the Bunk Art'1 facility. Although called a bunker, it was more like an extensive bomb shelter. 

This bomb shelter was built into the mountain during 1973-74

Hoxha built this bomb shelter to be his command center when the Western powers dropped nuclear bombs on Albania. Hoxha was a paranoid leader who, starting in 1971, had over 170,000 bunkers built throughout Albania because of his fear of nuclear attack from the Western powers. The exhibits in Bunk Art'1 included rooms with mock-ups of what they contained when built:

a living room in the living quarters area 

communications equipment of the early 1970s

One of the rooms included displays of gas masks as Albanians at the time were all trained on the use of gas masks because mustard gas deployment was another fear of the Hoxha administration. Even the horses had gas masks ready for them:

As we walked thru the bomb shelter, I had no problem going thru the doors. Phillip had to duck, but he did forget to crouch down once. Just once.

"Mind your head" as you walk thru the halls said the signs

When we reached the exit, the final door wasn't just a metal door. It was a six-inch thick concave concrete door. 

curved door and its curved doorstop

Tomorrow, we have a cooking class! Yay! I've been looking for them throughout our trip and this is actually the first one I've found at a reasonable cost. I spoke with a tour guide who said that they did not reappear after Covid stopped tourism. So sad, but at least I found this one for Albanian dishes.