Ovi and Cory had been raving about a wonderful bakery they had discovered in town, so our plans for the day involved a trip to the bakery, and a visit to the grocery store to stock up on some essentials. Missolonghi is not a tourist town, but it does have some things to offer for visitors including interesting salt flats, a winter nesting site for flamingos, and a national park. It looks like at some point there was hope of attracting tourism as the town has some of the widest roads and sidewalks we have seen in any city in Europe. It gives the town a puzzling look as you have these very broad boulevards with very few cars, and oversized sidewalks with only a couple of people walking down them. It looks like a town that missed its opportunity, and the overbuilt infrastructure acts as an exclamation point to the miss.
We met up with Ovi and Cory and strolled into town with our first destination being Lyros Bakery. The bakery has been in business for 18 years, but recently moved into a modern building that is well appointed and sparkling. The original owner operates the bakery with his son. The father is responsible for traditional Greek pastries, and the son who studied in Paris is responsible for modern French inspired deserts. It seems to be a winning combination as the customers were steady and diverse from grandmas and grandpas coming in to get cookies and honey based Greek deserts, to young professionals who were after Tirimasu’s and eclairs. We had a hard time picking, but Ton finally settled on a couple of French inspired deserts and I went for an assortment of Greek cookies.
Armed with our assortment of sweets we crossed the road to a cafe and ordered Greek Coffee to pair with our cookies. We then relaxed and chatted for the next couple of hours. We are starting to understand the appeal of the Mediterranean rhythm to life.
The last stop for the day was at a local grocery to stock up our pantries for the next few days. Ton enjoyed browsing in her first big Greek grocery and we walked out of there with more food than we planned on. Ovi told us we could have the groceries delivered to the marina, so we arranged for that and the lady said they would be there in 30 minutes.
On the way back we were enjoying meandering thru town, and a couple of places caught our attention. Eventually I realized that we had left the store more than 30 minutes ago and we were not close to the marina. Ovi sprinted ahead when we saw the delivery truck crossing an intersection ahead of us. He eventually caught up with Stavros the delivery guy at a restaurant. Ovi was rewarded for his efforts to run down Stavros by getting a lift to the marina while Cory, Ton and I walked the rest of the way.