Thursday 22 September 2011

A day in the tiny mountain village of Lefkes

Actually, I'll start with the wonderful dinner we had last night at the little taverna on the beach of Agio Dimitrios in Naoussa.  This is the same place we had lunch at on Tuesday and it was so good, we decided to come back for dinner.  We had a great table right on the beach again, where we sat and enjoyed the sunset while Den had a glass of ouzo and I had a glass of Paros wine.





We then followed our waiter into the tiny kitchen and chose our fresh fish for our dinner ~ Den chose red snapper and I had the sea bass.  The waiter weighed the 2 whole fishes since the price is per kilo.  We then returned to our little table and watched the sky turn dark while the cook grilled our fish.  The dishes were simply presented with a side of salad and our very kind waiter deboned the fish for us, making sure to scoop out the sweet meat from the cheeks.  The flesh of both fish was simply mouth watering and we devoured both our plates, scooping up the last of the olive oil with some bread.  After lingering over the last of our bottle of wine, we went for a walk along the harbour and the little streets of Naoussa once again, this time looking for a Greek dessert that I had read about ~ little fried balls of dough which are then covered in either honey, chocolate sauce or sugar.  We walked everywhere and just couldn't find them ~ oh well, we will try again tomorrow night.

We made our way back to our hotel around 11pm where we had another great night's sleep.

Up around 8am this morning and we enjoyed another very nice breakfast around the hotel pool while we chatted with some newlyweds from California.  Our rental car arrived around 10am and after filling out the paperwork and checking the car for scratches, bumps and dents, off we went.  We didn't get far before Den went the wrong way down a one way street and I had to guide him as he drove out backwards while 3 cars patiently followed him.  Not a great start to our day, eh?

Once we got on the road to Lefkes, we started to relax and enjoy the beautiful views.  The road was very  twisty and narrow and continually brought us up the mountains of Paros.




Once we found Lefkes and found parking, we began our descent into the little village, going through many little narrow streets full of unique doors, windows, flowers, churches, and shops.











We found a tiny little place for lunch with a rooftop terrace that looked over the mountains of Lefkes.  It is run by a mother and daughter who make everything from scratch that day with local ingredients, some from their own garden.  Den has an eggplant pie with crispy layers of phyllo pastry and I had pillowy soft gnoccis made that day, in a sauce of local goat cheese, tomatoes and herbs.  Dessert was an orange pie that we had to wait for because they were still baking it when we started lunch and it had to cool first.  We sat and ate and drank and admired the views and spoke with a young couple (he was from Liverpool and she was from Amsterdam, they met skiing in Austria!) and just relaxed and drank it all in for over 2 hours.









We started our trek back to the car a little before 3pm, getting turned around in the maze of narrow streets and then also getting lost while trying to find our way back to the highway.  We didn't have a proper map and we couldn't read the signs and the roads were treacherously high with sheer drops and no guardrails, so there may have been a little swearing, a little praying and a little yelling, but we managed to make it back in one piece!  Maybe we will take buses on Naxos, lol.

We were back at the hotel a little after 4pm and Den had a well deserved nap after our harrowing drive back.  We are just taking it easy and will soon take our showers and get ready for our last night in Naoussa.

Kalimera!

1 comment:

  1. Your enjoyment of glorious Greece shines through! Enjoying your reports immensely!

    Rob

    ReplyDelete