More over, the Ghikas family have become my extended family in Athens. They are fantastic - Nikos has been a friend of dads since school. Sabine is French and wonderful, and together they have saved me from numerous travel faux-pas on my part; driving me high-speed into Athens when I lost my passport at 16, or when I missed my plane by 24 hours when I was 17...
On top of being my Greek travel saints, their daughter Nathalie is like my big sister. Sab was pregnant with her when my parents moved to NZ and ever time we visited when I was little, we dod family things together like camping trips and beach days. We have missed each other on my visits for many years as she studied in France or travelled abroad.
This time though, she is living in Athens!! So I have been able to hang out with her; she took me to a very nice bar called 'home project' which has couches, bean bags, beds, television areas, play stations, and a pool room. It has nice lighting, chilled music and great drinks. We also went to Nathalie's apartment in Glyfada which she shares with her boyfriend, Pavlos. It is a fantastic little apartment, which Pavlos' parents own and renovated for them so it is really modern and funky, and they have LED lighting which makes the space transform depending on what color and intensity the light is! It's nicely thought out, which impressed me. On Wednesday night we three went to a bar in Glyfada called Living for cocktails. I asked Pavlos to choose for me, as the menu was only in Greek. Good idea, he chose a delicious champagne cocktail... We were only supposed to be having a quick drink, but eded up getting back at 1am!!
I got to spend a nice time with Sabine the first night I was here, when she made vegetarian lasagne (which was delicious and I'm going to attempt when im home!) Sab drives into the city for work, so I hitched a ride on Tuesday to have a look around, and she picked me up from Pappou's too... This was my awesome shopping day :)
Nikos owns a jewellery shop in an arcade in the city, and I made my way there on Wednesday And had a good play with all his lovely pieces. We had lunch together then I made my way in the metro to Sab's work (got a little disorientated and ended up waking the same street three times. Doh!)
We had a big family dinner on Wednesday night; Sab made calamari and black eyed beans which are really nice, and we had he last of the lasagna (almost better a day later!!) for dessert, Nat and I made a sokolatopita - chocolate pie!!!! Well, I say we made it, but really Nat did all the hard stuff, I just stirred and licked the bowl... This pie has orange-chocolate icing, but as were running a little late after baking, we didn't wait for the pie to cool, and put all the icing on. This subsequently melted instead of setting, so it ended up being a little pool of goo in the middle of our pie. Not such a bad thing in my opinion! It was delicious :D
It is so nice to stay with then, they really are my family.
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