7-16 Cooking and shopping!

So I started my day off by sleeping in! it was wonderful the first time ive slept till 10 in over a month!!! I woke up because I could hear Kristi typing, I was a little frustrated because I couldn’t fall back asleep so I rolled over and looked at the clock to see what time it was and it was 10!!! Whoops! My greek cooking class sas trip was leaving at 11, so I had to get up and get ready fast! I left the room at 10:53ish which is real bad because the buses here for trips are a little walk away from the ship so I had to run.. made it with like a minute to spare though..

So what was supposed to be like a 15 minute drive ended up being an over an hour ride because of the heavy traffic.. but finally we got there! The class was in a little restaurant we walked in and were greeting with a shot glass of this honey wine that was really good and then were asked to take a seat somewhere. Around the outsides of the room were chairs for everyone and they were grouped into five sections that each had a table in front of it that had lots of ingredients and supplies set up on it. this ended up not really being the cooking class I had anticipated it to be.. what we really did was a “game” We had to pick a team leader.. my group went for the nose goes method of picking on, but the girl who was last really didn’t want to be it so I stepped up to the plate.. little did I know that this would mean for the next two hours I got to wear a wonderful chefs hat.. they gave each of us an apron that we were able to keep as well.  So what the game entailed was that we were given a paper with about 7 recipes on it.. and by recipes I mean there were lists of ingredients.. then they would walk around with a sample plate of what it was we were trying to make and say ready, set, go..  two people at a time in a team could prepare the dish and had about 10 minutes to do so.. then they would “judge” the dishes and pick a winner.. in the end we came out in 4th place haha.. really this was not so easy to do.. we didn’t have the utensils you would really want to use, we had no idea how many plates we could use so that was  tricky too.. and on top of it all we were rushed and not given a whole lot of guidance so we more or less just had fun trying to figure it all out.. but our food wasn’t all that editable.. which was the point we were supposed to eat it in the end.. but seeing as one dish was mixed with someone’s hand, and another had sardine pieces in it that had bones.. yeah none of us were really all that ready to try our concoctions it was fun though and the food looked good in general.. and I have the papers so that I can try and recreate them someday!

After getting back to the ship it was time to rest for a little bit.. then Jackie, Christina, Meisha (our neighbors to the right) Kristi and I headed out for Palatka which is a street with lots of shopping in Athens. We enjoyed some more cheap pitas and shopped for the rest of the day.. I got a couple new rings and a pair of earrings! =)  we shopped until the stores started closing and then decided to get some good greek food for dinner before heading back to the ship.  We found a very cute little restaurant at the foot of the street we were on and decided it looked good. The guy trying to get people to come eat there said he would give us each a free glass of ouzo so that helped convince us too.. Ouzo is the greek alcohol.  It tastes like liquorish and none of us liked it.. it was also pretty strong. But if you watch my big fat greek wedding it’s the drink that they give to the millers.  =)  and we were told by many people we had to try it. we all ordered greek food for dinner but no actual dinner meal.. like just appetizers and salads.. I had a greek salad which I think is like one of my new favorite foods and ill be making it at home for sure..  its just chunks of tomatoes and cucumbers, pieces of onions, green peppers and olives (which I didn’t eat) and feta cheese.. and then on top of it you put olive oil and its really good.. then some of them decided to get some desserts.. Christina got baklava and I wanted to try it out.. I ended up splitting it with her because it was sooooooo GOOD!!!!! It’s a crispy dough with nuts and honey and just AMAZING! I fell in love =) after all this we made our way back to the ship for the night and got to sleep in the next morning!!!!