The Greeks are really starting to win us over. We had very little planned for the day except for a walk to town. We spent some time in the morning working with Delta airlines fixing our flights as the leg from Athens to Amsterdam was canceled by KLM airlines. This is the second time KLM has done this on the trip, when we were coming they canceled the flight from Amsterdam to Paris, so we will be avoiding KLM in the future.
Cory and Ton had set up a brunch date for 11am so we were off to Cory and Ovi’s boat for omelets. After brunch was done we headed into town for an afternoon stroll. Ovi has an incredible sweet tooth so he took us on a tour of the bakeries of Missolonghi. At the second bakery Cory took Ton in to show her something. I was hanging around in the street when 4 Greek gentlemen sitting in front of the bakery asked me where I was from. Before we knew what hit us we were sitting down with them exchanging shots of Ouzo and telling our life stories. None of them were at all fluent in English, but that was not going to stop them from getting to know us. It took all of our willpower to break away from them before the shots of Ouzo got out of control.
Around the corner from the bakery was a Greek Orthodox church that Cory says has always been closed. Today it was open so we were tentatively peeking in when a very young Priest waved us in. Ton and I have noticed that many Orthodox churches don’t allow photos. When we went inside there was an older lady who greeted us with a big smile and a warm welcome in Greek. We pantomimed as best we could about whether we could take pictures, she ran out for a minute or two and then came back and told us it was ok.
The church was quite striking inside which we did not expect as Missolonghi is not a large town. We were really enjoying exploring the inside when we noticed that a crowd of people were coming in for a memorial service so we decided to take off. As we were leaving the priest came up and gave us icons from the church and thanked us for visiting.
After sitting down and eating a couple of pastries from our tour of the bakeries of Missolonghi we headed over to the grocery store to get a bottle of red wine that we had really enjoyed a couple of nights ago. As we were walking in the manager who had set up the delivery of our groceries greeted us like we were regulars, Stavros the delivery guy came up and gave Ovi a fist bump and continued to tutor him on Greek cuss words. George the cheese guy greeted us by name, and gave us a run down on what cheeses were good today. We made a new friend at the cashier, for some reason this store is the first one we have seen in Europe with Sriricha hot sauce from Thailand. It is the good stuff too. When we went to pay for it the cashier was checking it out and Ton and Ovi launched into a sales pitch on the merits of Sriricha, by the end everyone was laughing and she said she would buy some.
Most people are reticent about trying to communicate with foreigners if they are not fluent, the Greeks seem to thrive on it. It is incredibly charming and impressive.