Friday. We all slept in this morning. I started the day with the daily Hexcells Infinite puzzle. The breezed through that and then tried a little of the new game Fine Sweeper that I had picked up on sale yesterday. That was fun. I made it to level twenty six on my second try and made a pretty impressive top global score for one of my first tries!
The girls took over the Steam system from me to play Goat Simulator. I noticed today that it supported multiple players, up to four. So I hooked up the second Steam controller and the girls played for an hour or so on a split screen. This is so perfect for them. They had so much fun. We could hear them all through the house just laughing and laughing. They get onto the funniest kicks.
This afternoon Dominica wanted to go grocery shopping so we packed up the kids and went to two different grocery stores. One in the next door village and then down to the bakery two towns away where we picked up cheese cake and profiterole in addition to our bread and stuff. Then up the hill to a fancier grocery store that we had not been to yet. It was a good shopping run and we are well stocked after this.
We had decided to go out to dinner tonight, only our second time going out to dinner while in Greece, and wanted to do something low key and near home. So we settled on checking out the local restaurant which is right down on the main road to the south of us; a very quick walk.
We dropped off the groceries and stuff and dealt with a bit of a parking problem as we could not figure out where to park the car as our usual area for it was full of other cars. Once we had a solution, which took probably half an hour since we were not very good at figuring out what to do, we walked on to the taverna, which was right around the corner.
This is a little place called the Olive Wood and is extremely small and local. There are definitely no people coming from other towns to visit this restaurant, it only has maybe three tables and a couple seats at a sort of bar where they are preparing the food, not a bar that you would actually sit at. Brightly lit and a television up on the wall in the corner showing the football game as you find all over Europe. This is definitely the local haunt.
We were welcomed most hospitably, people even moved to get us a good table. There were a couple individuals in the taverna and one large family our group at the back table. Very small place, we could hardly go unnoticed in any way.
The owner spoke just a tiny bit of English but enough to work out, after a bit of explaining, that we were pescatarians and did not eat meat. However, he then had to explain that he had no fish and that if we want fish we have to come in the day before and request it and then he will go down to the wharf and pick some out for us for the next day.
This is a classic small town taverna like you should expect when travelling to out of the way Europe, especially in the south, and the meal was “eat what we bring.” It was not quite like that as he would ask us if we wanted things but it was not like they had a menu of any sort and it was little bits at a time. We got a decanter of the white house wine, which was very tasty, and the girls broke out their new colouring books that they had picked up at the grocery store earlier today and coloured while our food was made.
First up we had a green salad. Very Greek with delicious oil dressing, lots of parsley and tart flavours. We really liked it and Liesl even had some.
Next up was fried cheese. This was amazingly good. Two big slabs of square, thick cut local cheese, rolled in sesame seeds and quickly pan fried. He brought one, then the other to us. Very tasty.
We got tomato fritters next, which were very good. Then the main meal was an omelet, very similar in nature to a Spanish tortilla, with eggs and potatoes. It is apparently a very Mediterranean food, but not one that you tend to associate with Greece coming from the US, but I supposed when you think about Greek food in diners it is very much what we think of. So that makes sense.
We had zucchini fritters then, too. Those were so good. The girls were happy with the food and really loved the omelet. They devoured that.
The table next to us ended up sending over a decanter of wine to us and we ended up hanging out quite a bit. They were having a bit of a party and had brought chocolate cake, too, which the taverna served to us, too. They recommended that we take part in the local carnival parade when it comes around. They said that it was much more fun than just watching it, especially for the girls. They were nearly all Brits who had moved to Prines a decade ago and just settled, except for one that was from Mozambique. Every one is so friendly and social here. Southern Greece definitely works well for me.
I had to duck out early and run back up the hill for my Wednesday conference call that had been rescheduled until tonight. I left Dominica and the girls hanging out with the neighbours.
Dominica and the girls were back to the house before I was done with my call. It was very late by the time that that was done and before long, everyone was off to bed.