Just Me and the Waiter
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
39
148
Trip End
Dec 09, 2008
Heraklion,
Greece
Saturday, September 27, 2008
When I woke up, I found an open taverna nearby. It was completely empty at 6PM because Greeks don't eat dinner until 8 or 10 at night. Nightclubs don't even start until midnight, and don't really get hopping until 3AM. Maybe my night owl habits have just been on Greek time all my life.
I ate bread (you get psomi with every meal), angouri dhomata salad (cucumbers and tomatoes in oil and vinegar dressing), and yemitsas (baked tomatoes stuffed with fragrant rice, grated carrot, and oregano). Yum yum yum. Motorcycles whizzed by in the alley right beside my table. Greeks like to dine al fresco in fine weather, which it was during our entire trip
Yemitsas, baked stuffed tomatoes
.I asked the waiter if the taverna would be open tomorrow. Well, really I said "Taverna here, food Sunday?" but he seemed to understand me. He made a gesture like a key turning, which I interpreted to mean closed, like everything else on Sundays. See, I learned my lesson on that point. We have a lunch scheduled for tomorrow, but we're on our own again for Sunday dinner, so I went into a grocery store and bought nuts, dried fruit, and orange juice. Now I'm ready.
Long after I was in bed for the night, some of the students went out prowling Heraklion for night clubs. They found the walls of the club shaking with music at midnight, but everyone was standing around talking to each other instead of dancing. Our American students tried to dance, but they got stared down and sniffed at, so they left the club, cowed. A friendly local told them later that even though the music starts at midnight, the dancing doesn't start until 3AM. Don't worry for our forlorn non-dancing students, they found livelier clubs at our next stop.
