Opa! We love music and singing and that leads to dancing! We love to hug. We love to kiss. We love to eat! We love to be happy!

Perhaps I would love to be Greek? I certainly loved it during our time in Thessaloniki! Our ferry landed in Igomonitsa and off we drove – arriving many hours later to enjoy a five star hotel at the seaside. For this one night they had given us our own rooms so Stacey had time to catch up on work while I took advantage of the space to catch up on laundry and let it dry – discreetly hidden – on the balcony.

I particularly enjoyed my fruit and sampling of Greek delights which had been unexpectedly delivered to my room. Thankfully they did not spoil my appetite for that which was to come…

Our musical hosts insisted that we join them for dinner… to begin at 20:30 – that time when we would prefer to be reading a book or preparing to sleep. It was about. 30 minute walk through town but there was festivity in the air and we felt safe.

Our hosts could not have been more ideal for the situation. The two men did not speak English but Helen, our new friend, spoke very well and we enjoyed her warm personality. My opening quotes are all from Helen.

Stratos, Helen and Dimitri were all happy to share their Greek culture and food. We began our evening with a visit from the restaurant owner – he brought a plate of fragrant blossoms and one at a time he placed the blossoms in our hand, closed our fingers and kissed the back of our hand. Fortunately he first did this with Helen so we knew what to expect. When he left we inquired as to what we should be doing with our blossoms. She told us to smell them and enjoy knowing that a man has given us flowers. It was so sweet. We loved it. then what to do with the flowers? We never saw what Helen did with hers but suddenly both hands were free. Stacey took a moment to return here to the plate. I waited a moment until I could do the same. The deal is that it really was fun to be given flowers.

There was a moment of confusion as we explained that we would not be joining them with alcohol but they seemed to enjoy Stacey having a coke and me drinking lemonade. They referred back to it more than once. We did however enjoy the color of Helen’s beautiful wine. There was some relief when we assured them that we would be happy to eat pork

Even more fun was when we agreed to let them choose all of the food for the evening. Lots of Greek chatter produced a delicious dinner that lasted for almost three hours. I’m pretty sure I never quit eating – the true Mediterranean diet! Everything so fresh and tasty! We were exhausted but enriched by our experience.

In return they told us several times that they enjoyed being with us because we smiled so much. How could we help it? Aside from being naturally happy we were in such jovial company. Opa!

I’m so far behind …

We met the next morning to tour the venue at Aristotle university and then said goodbye. Most of the day was spent driving to Athens with the highlight being seeing Mt. Olympus from the car. I think we counted 12 toll booths.

We ate one more Greek dinner which wasn’t nearly as entertaining though there was live music and partway through our meal they gathered several diners and taught them to dance – faster and faster and faster until they all yelled OPA and each shattered a plate on the floor. It was fun to clap along and made more enjoyable by the fact that we didn’t have to be out there dancing!

After all that food we thought we should have one more baklava – this was so good. Lots of pistachios and not too sweet. For some reason our waiter then brought us two more traditional desserts – on the house? What could we do but eat them also? Opa!

There were no meetings in Athens. We drove down to catch a plane but first had a couple hours in town. We decided to drive to the Acropolis but couldn’t get tickets in time. This was fine because I was there just last year and we also had seen the beautiful Greek temples in Paestum. It was fun to climb around Mars Hill and see what we could of the amphitheater where Stacey would love to bring performers someday.

We hurried to the airport, had trouble with the signs, managed to find our gate in time and then found that our seatmate was a dog. I always knew this would happen to me someday…

Well – it turns out the dog slept and the owner was very sweet and this wraps up my big fat Greek weekend-ish. Opa!