Day 32: Greek Cooking

This is usually the part where I talk about getting an "early start" for the day but our meeting time for the cooking class wasn't until late morning.  It was nice to get a little more rest than usual.  After eventually meeting, the bus ride into Athens that was supposed to take 15 minutes ended up being over an hour due to traffic.  Luckily the place we were going to was understanding and still gave us the full time we paid for.

The cooking lesson itself was a little different than I expected.  We were spit into groups of 5 or 6, designated a leader, and were given a list of dishes and ingrediets.  It was setup as a competition between groups and each of the 6 dishes we had to make had to be done within a time limit.  There wasn't a great deal of instruction but there were people roaming around offering answers to questions.  We were shown an example of the dish and people from each group rotated making them.  It was fast paced but fun.  We made Dakos, a traditional Greek Salad (I'm a master at cutting tomatoes now), Tzatziki, Taramosalata, Fakes, and Prassaia Salad.  I have recipes so I'll make you all some good Greek food one of these days.  After the official "class" we got some free time to hang out and eat our wonderful creations (some turned out better than others...).  To answer the question I've already gotten multiple times: No, I was not the only male on the trip.  I think there was enough of us for one in each group (hence my tomato slicing specialty).

Since we were right in the heart of Athens, a lot of people signed out of the transportation back to the ship.  On the recommendation of the ship's massage therapist (who was also present at the cooking class) I went with my friend Mindy to check out the Athens Central Market.  I was in need of another USB drive for some photo backup and picked one up for a good price (and yes, it actually works).  If you ever need shoes, this is the place to come.  It seemed like every other store was a shoestore.  It was fun walking around and seeing more of Athens, it really is quite a large city.  Since we were out of the major tourist areas it was neat to see a lot more locals and observe some of that interaction.  We stopped for a quick bite where I got a good Monastiraki Salad and later explored the city center some more.  Despite our best efforts and an extended search we weren't able to find any ice cream.  It looks as if the days of gelato and ice cream might be nearing their end.  I did finally get some Greek olive oil before we took the Metro back to Piraeus.

This evening has been pretty uneventful.  Daniel and Lacey returned from an overnight trip to Delphi so after a quick dinner I made a visit to the gym and find myself composing yet another blog.  Delphi tomorrow, I've heard good things.  That's all for now, I have to figure out what is appropriate as a sacrifice to Apollo.