July 12, 2014
I have experimented using the maps function on my phone a few times since we have been here. I have free data usage (thank you tmobile!) and figured, "why not". Never having used it before I wasn't really familiar with how it worked. We were having "small village, difficult to find" syndrome and so I pulled out my phone and entered the town name and the map took us right there! We were so grateful and excited because we have spent our fair share of time lost on this trip.
Sidichori is a little village above Kastoria, and after asking three different people where our lodging was, we arrived on Ilias' doorstep. He showed us to our room, three flights up, and we were immediately charmed by the room. We stepped out on to our balcony and were greeted with a beautiful view of Kastoria, only slightly marred by the electrical wires strung in front of us.
After we settled in a bit we ate dinner and decided to take a little photo walk through the village. Once outside we discovered Ilias in his garden. I asked if we could come in and look around and he enthusiastically agreed. Once inside he told us what everything was as we ooo ed and aah ed over our favorite veggies. He showed us some wild greens "zuchare" (?) and encouraged us to pick big bunches, telling us it would be for our salad. We picked it thinking we would put it in the fridge to add to our lunch the next day. After we finished picking Ilias said " Come, I will make you dinner" Um...dinner??? Hmn.... (We had just eaten Greek salad for dinner) Well, a Greek man is offering to prepare dinner for us so we decided we could stuff it in.
We went in to the kitchen and I took pictures while he started cleaning the greens, etc. suddenly I turned around mid chat with Ilias and there was a woman standing there with a very bewildered look on her face ( wondering why there were strange women in the kitchen with her husband, I'm sure). Annelle and I said Hi and introduced ourselves to what turned out to be his wife Hara. Following minutes behind were their children Irini and Marco. Such a delightful family! It turns out that the family lives in town and if dad is tending the business, mom and children come to visit on Saturday night.
Irini, who is eleven, is attending her third year of English school and her English is very charming! Her teacher is Norwegian, but she learned her English from a Brit so she speaks with a British accent, so hence, Irini speaks with a British accent! She is adorable and very smart and her parents turned to her on multiple occasions to provide them with the English translation of a word.
Younger brother Marco doesn't speak English yet but ran around with a Spider-Man hat on and a superhero t shirt. Nice to see that boys are boys no matter where you are in the world!
Our "second dinner" of steamed greens, tzatziki, Greek salad, watermelon and GF bread was delicious . Ilias had made a point of having the village baker make us two loaves of GF bread that was crusty and amazing. ( we also had wonderful GF bread in Meteora, along with cookies made from corn that were delicious) The entire evening was such an unexpected treat!
We ended our evening with photos of the full moon while enjoying the crisp, cool mountain air.
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