Day 2 – Greece: Easter Celebrations
Disclaimer: This post has photos that are not vegan friendly.
Happy Easter! I woke up at 10am and got ready for the day. Stelios and Leo had been up since 8:30am and were already outside. Today’s plan was a big family cookout in the backyard to celebrate Easter. The sun was shining and weather was perfect. Leo and his cousin Angelou were playing with pop rocks in the basketball court, while the rest of the family sat and chatted around the pig roast. Normally lamb is the traditional meal or so we thought, but this year for whatever reason they decided to do a pig roast because more people enjoy it. Either way I think anything they cook in that commercial roaster will taste amazing. Also the pig roast looked cool but I had to stop myself from looking at it when it turns all the way around and seeing the whole pig and its face on the stick because then I feel bad/weird about eating it. Ignorance is bliss 🙂
We were having such an enjoyable morning that at 12:30pm Stelios realized that we forgot to pick up our rental car. Woops! He called them and told them we can either be there in 30 mins (walking) but luckily they were very accommodating and the lady dropped off the car for us and we drove her back to the rental shop which was only a 5 minute drive away. She told us next time we visit she can just drop it off also since we live so close to Chora. How convenient!
Back at the house the family started setting the table and getting ready to feast. The kids have officially ran out of pop rocks at this point but Tasos keeps dropping the loud dynamite bombs sneakily that the kids aren’t allowed to play with. He’s got quite the poker face too. I think I’m going to go partially deaf with all the noise bombs going off. I debated getting my earplugs to wear but I didn’t.
By 2:30pm we sat down for a feast. There was salad, pasta salad, 3 types of loukaniko (sausage), several cheeses and dips, warm pita, French fries, and of course the slow roasted pork. The only thing I didn’t try was the liver wrapped in intestines – which was “supposedly delicious” but no thanks I will pass on that. All of the food was so delicious and I was extremely full. I was getting antsy and couldn’t continue to sit around so I decided to play monkey in the middle with Leo and Angelou to work off some of the food. These boys had me running and jumping around and I worked up quite a sweat! We easily played for an hour or more until it was time for dessert. Dessert consisted of ice cream cake, a homemade cake, and 4 other cakes from A La Crème, the local bakery owned by Virginias family (Stelios’s cousin Markelo’s wife). I had one small bite of each and the chocolate one was my favorite followed by the vanilla lemon cake.
By 5pm it was nap time for me. I walked back to the house and unintentionally passed out for 3 hours and woke up with Stelios next to me who was also passed out. The jet lag and staying up late last night really took a toll on me. At around 8:30pm we heard fireworks outside so Stelios Leo and I went up to the roof to watch them. It was also wild how many more stars you can see here compared to back home. We enjoyed the night sky and cool breeze after a long day and talked about going for a hike tomorrow. Overall a very family and food filled Easter Sunday in Greece.
