Greece, Day 2: Part 2

Posted on by Dale

The view from our hotel room:

We reconvened at 6:30 — it being far too hot to be out and about before then — and after some comedy trying to round up enough taxis to get us all to the main square (the bus having the rest of the day off), we set off on a walking tour of the main shopping district.

Not a lot of shopping going on, since it was Sunday and almost all the stores are closed. There were a few international brands open on Sunday, but this is generally disapproved of.

In one of the crossroads, there was this distinctive sculpture. I’m not sure that this was what Elfi was referring to when she talked about a statue/shrine to Hermes being the indicator of a place of commerce, but I will leave it here with no comment.

Every now and then there would be a small church or monastery. This one was sunken below street level as the city was built up around it.

The interior has not been restored.

There were street clowns. They were not exciting.

The cathedral of Athens, built for the coronation of their first king in the 1820s.

Lots of people hanging about, many small children — in a city of 5 million, most of whom live in apartments, public spaces are alive with activity.

Next to the cathedral, a tiny Byzantine church, the Church of Theotokos Gorgoepikoos and Ayios Eleytherios. Just so you know.

From everywhere, the Acropolis.

Kitties! They were sunning themselves and completely uncaring of the humans around them. The one in the center was old and feeble looking and it hurt my heart. However, it appeared as if all the feral cats were regularly fed by the neighborhood; we saw many meals put out for them.

After our walking tour, Efi left us to our own devices, with instructions on where to go to get a taxi back to the hotel. We ended up at Drunk Sinatra based on its cocktail reputation.

The food was okay, just pizza, but the cocktails were as advertised.

To start, I had The Risk and my Lovely First Wife had the Call Me (unpictured). But the best was the One Night Stand:

I had two. I will be attempting to replicate this one at home since I have all the ingredients.

It is worth noting that Athenians dine very late; we started at 8:30, and by 9:30 the place began hopping. When we left at 10:30, the area was packed.

We only got a little astray in heading back to find a taxi, but we prevailed. And so to bed.

Greece, Day 2: Part 1

Posted on by Dale

Fun fact: Did you know that Athens’ sewage system is so ancient that they don’t want you flushing “paper” down the toilet? Instead, there are little bins in which you deposit your used Charmin. (They are emptied by staff.)

After a good night’s rest — finally — we were up early for breakfast. The little restaurant downstairs is lavishly appointed, and the buffet was staggering in its variety. (We’re staying at the Divani Caravel.) But the architecturally unnecessary steps down to the buffet were… disorienting.

The hotel as a whole is lavish. Here’s the grand stairway leading down to the big halls:

Onto the bus, where our wonderful tour guide Efi greeted us. Today was going to be a bit disorienting for her, since there was a bicycle race through the city and she was not sure where we were going to be to able to go and how we were going to get there. But we set off, past the original stadium built for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896…

… heading towards the Acropolis.

You may as well know now that there is no such thing as too many photos of the Parthenon.

How bus drivers navigate streets that were never built for buses (or for the number of cars used by 5 million people), I will never know. We actually made it past the bicycle race barricades just as they were going up.

It’s a hike up.

But the views are spectacular. Here’s a monument on top of another mountain, the name of which I didn’t catch. Feel free to inform me in comments.

Before you reach the Propylæa, the monumental gates to the Acropolis, you overlook the Odeion, the theatre build in Roman times.

You will perhaps recognize it from Yanni: Live at the Acropolis. Oh yes you do.

Here is my Lovely First Wife, perhaps not understanding that for one’s “death shot” (our term for that photo inevitably used for one’s obituary) one removes one’s face mask. (Although Covid restrictions have been largely lifted in Greece, face masks are still required in certain settings and encouraged in others.)

The Propylæa.

Originally a fortress, a walled city, eventually the Acropolis became a place of temples and worship. The buildings still remaining were built when Athens became an independent, wealthy city-state, and they’re all of marble.

This patch in the wall of the Proplyæa interested me. I am presuming it may have been damage from a cannonball, perhaps. The takeaway is that those who patched it were clearly nowhere on the same level as those who built it.

The Parthenon.

As the couple from Nashville quipped, “Ours has a roof.”

Good shot, I thought.

The good thing about getting there early was that it was not quite as hot — temperatures have been in the 90s — and the crowds were just beginning to get there.

The Erechtheion, which I presume you remember from your art history class.

At the other end of the Parthenon, it was astounding to be able to see how not-straight the whole thing is. Every line is slightly curved, mathematically calculated to fool the human eye into thinking it is all straight.

It’s even hard to see in the photograph. You just have to go and see for yourself.

Down below, the theatre of Dionysus. Where it all started. When Proteus says at the opening of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, “The theatre is a temple,” that’s not a joke. (It has always amused me that the two main roots of Western theatre are religious: Dionysus worship in ancient Greece, and the Quem queritas from medieval Catholicism.)

The place is littered with pieces of the past.

A couples death shot. Yes, I’m wearing a kilt the entire trip; I am definitely the rara avis on this trip.

The Erechtheion from the side. I didn’t get a photo, but the wall at the end is still intact and has windows.

Then it was down the hill to the Acropolis Museum, a fabulous new building. On the way, I kept noticing the letter phi inscribed the marble paving stones.

I asked Elfi what it might mean, but she had no answer. I also saw a couple of chi‘s, so they may be just stonecutters marks.

Ooh, and also on the way, there was a private residence whose front doors had these for handles:

Woot!

The Acropolis Museum is beautiful, ultramodern.

When they began excavation for the new building, no one should have been surprised that they discovered layer upon layer of ur-Athens beneath. Not a problem: the architects pivoted and installed glass floors in the entrance  and first floor so you can see the ruins beneath. (I should have gotten a picture.)

A comedy mask.

One of the original caryatids from the Erchtheion. They removed all of them, cleaned them of centuries of smoke and pollution, and installed them here. The ones on the Acropolis are replicas.

The top floor of the museum pivots to be parallel to the Parthenon and is a replica of its floor plan: It has the same number of columns, and the metopes from the frieze are displayed in the appropriate location. Some are original, but many are replicas of the ones removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin. (This is a sore subject for the Greeks.)

The view from the museum:

After a nice lunch, we retreated to the hotel and took a nap. Thus endeth the first part of the first day.

 

Greece, Day 1

Posted on by Dale

Have I mentioned how much I hate to fly? Across country is one thing, but across the globe is quite another: an 11-hour flight from Atlanta to Greece, nonstop, which started late because Delta overbooked the flight and no one would take their increasingly attractive offers to give up their seats — possibly because we all had to be somewhere the next day on time — and our seats were not the ones we had signed up for — an aisle and window — but instead were the two middle seats in steerage Kenneth AND DO YOU THINK I GOT ANY REAL SLEEP?

So, here we are in Athens, and such is my delirium that I have no photos to show you, except for this one, snapped outside the cafe where we resorted to get a little something in our stomachs after an execrable breakfast and to tide us over before a late dinner. (Greeks don’t eat dinner until 9:00 or so.)

Yes, it’s a golden human hand made up of other humans, and it does appear to be shooting a bird, with a bird on top of it.

Welcome to Athens.

I’ll do better tomorrow.

The Savoy Variations: Honeymoon Cocktail

Posted on by Dale

I’m bored, so I’m taking random cocktail recipes from The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), giving them a try, and modifying/improving them if I think it’s necessary, and reporting my findings here.

Honeymoon Cocktail

[p. 82]

This one turned out to be a winner, but it took some figuring. The original recipe confirms my suspicion that most of these 700+ recipes were just quick slugs for the Bright Young Things who splashed into the Savoy before heading out to the jazz clubs — no self-respecting bartender these days would publish a recipe with no actual measurements.

  • The Juice of ½ Lemon
  • 3 Dashes Curaçao
  • ½ Bénédictine
  • ½ Apple Brandy

There’s a note: “Some sensitive bartenders think it is more tactful to substitute orange juice.”

What? What kind of arch dig is this, and toward whom is it directed?

Never mind, we have to figure out what the heck to pour here.

Half a lemon? How big a lemon? How much juice do you want me to pour, Harry Craddock?

Pretty sure the curaçao called for here is the sweet stuff that I have eschewed in favor of the Dry Curaçao you see in the photo, but again, how much is three dashes? I actually have a set of measuring spoons for tiny amounts, and a dash is 1/8 tsp, so… 3/8 tsp?  That doesn’t seem enough.

::sigh::

The good news is that my first all-over-the-place interpretation was a winner. Here you go:

Honeymoon Cocktail (adapted)

  • ¾ oz lemon juice
  • ⅛ oz Dry Curaçao
  • 1 oz Bénédictine
  • 1 oz Apple Brandy (Calvados)

Shake with ice, strain into coupe. I’d probably garnish with a lemon twist.

Let’s give this point to Savoy (with an asterisk, since I had to interpret it and it’s probably not the same cocktail served by Savoy).

SAVOY VARIATIONS SCORECARD:

  • Savoy: 2
  • Dale: 2
  • Sink: 3

The Savoy Variations: Fernet-Branca Cocktail

Posted on by Dale

I’m bored, so I’m taking random cocktail recipes from The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), giving them a try, and modifying/improving them if I think it’s necessary, and reporting my findings here.

Fernet-Branca Cocktail

p. 70

I figured I was going to hate this one before I even started: Fernet Branca, while a darling of professional bartenders[1], tastes gross to me. And indeed, the cocktail was just nasty.[2]

  • ¼ Fernet-Branca
  • ¼ Italian (sweet vermouth)
  • ½ dry gin

There is a note beneath the recipe: “One of the best ‘morning-after’ cocktails ever invented. Fernet-Branca, an Italian vegetable extract, is a marvellous [sic] headache cure.”

Sure.

But what if you used one of the other amaros/bitters?

I randomly chose Vecchio Amaro Del Capo, which I think I bought because it appeared in some recipe I wanted to try, but with which I am not overly familiar — and it worked. It’s slightly sweet, not overly bitter, and way better than the mentholated cough syrup known as Fernet-Branca.

Vecchio Amaro Cocktail

  • ¾ oz Vecchio Amaro Del Capo
  • ¾ oz Italian (sweet vermouth)
  • 1 ½ oz dry gin

Much better, and worth repeating. I may make further adjustments to its balance, play with the gin involved, etc. If so, I’ll report back.

SAVOY VARIATIONS SCORECARD:

  • Savoy: 1
  • Dale: 2
  • Sink: 3

—————

[1] Personally, I think it’s one of those in-group things; they all take a shot of Fernet-Branca as a gesture of solidarity, and then they grimace as they clink shot glasses.

[2] You may very well like Fernet-Branca. If so, I will say that the original recipe will probably delight you. Plus, what is wrong with you?

Crossword shenanigans, part 2

Posted on by Dale

To keep my brain busy while we watch television in the evenings, I do crossword puzzles, and not just any crossword puzzles but the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, which is as everyone knows the most hardest of the week’s puzzles.

I have mentioned before that there’s some weird hippie woo thing going on with me and the puzzles, because too often to be random[1] it happens that something will occur while I am solving the puzzle that refers directly to some clue/answer in the puzzle, and usually as I am solving it.

After sixteen months, I just finished volume 8 (pictured to the left), and here are the weirdnesses that I noted.

 

[Part 1 of the weirdnesses]

Part 2:

9/9/21, #125: We’re watching The Good Fight, and Audra McDonald refers to Al Capone / as I am reading 57A: 1920’s tax evader

9/12/21, #126: Ted Lasso says, “I’m doing breathing exercises” /as I see 55D: It breathes

9/14/21, #127: Marie Kondo show; main person Lorri says she’s saying “goodbye” to her past life / as I see 86A: Goodbyes

9/27/21, #132: Watching the Tonys, “Broadway’s Back,” a medley from Jagged Little Pill / as I’m solving 99A: “[ALANIS] Unplugged” (1999 album)

9/28/21, #133: 114D: Tony winner Salonga was a presenter on the Tonys

10/25/21, #143: I had just finished the puzzle when a character on Grantchester, an American lieutenant, says his grandfather had gone up against the Red Baron in WWI / 70D: Manfred von ______ (The Red Baron)

11/5/21, #151: Watching a rerun of Life in Pieces; little Sophia lists all her “bad words,” ending with the “F-word”: Fart / as I am seeing 52D: Toot

11/7/21, #151: Skit on SNL, something about a cable cancellation with Kieran Culkin / 142A: Many a phone caller, ON HOLD

11/8/21, #152: Curtis Sliwa had just lost the election for NYC mayor / 74D: Guardian Angels wear

11/22/21, #155: Watching Tick tick boom; he’s in the diner, woman says, “The trash needs taking out” / I had just solved 28A: Busboy’s job, sometimes

12/1/21, #160: After attending our daughter-in-law Kristin’s PhD defense panel today / 4D: Researcher’s goal, perhaps

12/29/21, #171: Watching Emily in Paris, where one of the main characters is named Alfie / 119D: Alfie’s residence

1/2/22, #172: The week before, my friend Chas was on Jeopardy; the answer to the Final Jeopardy was the Arno River / 21A: River spanned by the Ponte Vecchio

1/11/22, #174: Watching Big Bang Theory; Sheldon says, through Penny’s door, “Are you whispering ‘Don’t make a sound’?” / right as I hit 41D: Faint sound?

1/20/22, #176: Dwayne Hickman had just died / 119A: Sitcom character with “many loves”

2/3/22, #183: Watching the Beijing Olympics / 81D: Skater ____ Thomas

2/6/22, #184: Watching the Beijing Olympics / 70D: Top prize, GOLD

2/7/22, #185: An Olympics ad for Celsius soda / 34A: Quote, part 3, CELSIUS and 109A: Quote, part 7, DRCELSIUSCOULDSAY

2/8/22, #187: Watching the Beijing Olympics / 56A, Barcelona Olympics quest

2/10/22, #188: Still watching the Olympics / 97D: Olympian Johnson

2/14/22, #190: I’m wearing my Acadia National Park t-shirt / 1A: Acadia National Park locale

2/20/22, #192: Watching Sean White’s final interview at the Olympics; he’s asked about not winning a medal / as I am solving 70A: Fail to medal

One final false alarm: 3/3/22, #198: Episode of Home Economics, Connor has to step in to partner his housekeeper in a salsa competition / 8A: Latin step, but alas, it was SAMBA, not SALSA.

So over the course of sixteen months, I had thirty-three bizarre coincidences, and that’s out of 100 puzzles. That’s a pretty high woo-to-reality ratio, people. You’d think I would have won the lottery by now.

—————

[1] Of course it’s random. But it’s still weird.

Oh, darling, let’s talk.

Posted on by Dale

Yesterday this person was in line in front of me at the Kroger:

(image blurred for privacy)

His shirt says:

IN 1775 THEY TRIED TO TAKE OUR GUNS

WE SHOT THEM

Very patriot. Much brave.

Yes, you can buy these shirts, although there seems to be some confusion amongst the rabble about their exact precedents.

::sigh::

The American Revolution is not my time period, so I could be out of the loop on the latest historicity on the founding of our nation, but I do not remember the confiscation of weapons as being any part of the effort to break free of England. It was pretty much all about the self-governance thing, No Taxation Without Representation, et al.

If you needed an object lesson in how divorced from reality the right-wing nutjobs are today, here it is. They have concocted a fake national memory and are wearing t-shirts to advertise their deeply held religious beliefs in this fake memory. If I had asked this person to explain how and when “they” tried to “take our guns,” they would have blathered about the Second Amendment but they would not have answered the question. They would not have been able to answer the question.

More than that, they would not have known that they didn’t and couldn’t answer the question.

And here we are.

I, on the other hand, would have told him that perhaps he and his ilk were thinking of Shay’s Rebellion in 1786–7, when lots o’ muskets were confiscated after a group of disgruntled farmers and vets took up arms against the government of Massachusetts. It led semi-directly to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which led to the Bill of Rights, hence and ergo the SECOND AMENDMENT (MAY THE LORD JUST BLESS ITS HOLY NAME AMEN) KENNETH. (To be fair, I think those rebels had some cromulent complaints, unlike our current crop.)

But 1775? Nah. You just made that up, bubba.

Get a grip.

St. Augustine, Days 2 & 3

Posted on by Dale

I tried, guys, I really tried to make this as entertaining and informative as my other travelogues, but it ain’t happening. St. Augustine is just not that interesting.

We elected to get a two-day pass for the trolley, which travels in a 22-stop circuit around the city all the way from the FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH to RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT MUSEUM. You get the picture. It’s a good way to get an overview of where stuff is, but after the first round-trip one tires greatly of the driver’s patter. Plus the seats are uncomfortable.

The Castillo de San Marcos is wonderful. It is after all a National Monument. My main takeaway from the informational stations is that imperialism is both a hell of a drug and an absolute disease.

We went to the beach and that was nice.

Two great places to eat with phenomenal cocktails and amazing food: Odd Birds, out on Anastasia Island on the way to the beach, and Forgotten Tonic, in town.

But otherwise… it was good to get away.

ADDENDUM: I forgot—I was yelled at by a Trumpster loon. While we were eating lunch on Thursday on one of St. Augustine’s charming side streets, I was looking out the window when a full-size TRUMP WON flag went floating by. I was not too surprised; this is Florida, after all, and on the main drag there is a large home covered with banners saying things like LET’S GO BRANDON and LIBERALISM IS A DISEASE.

Then on Friday, as we were walking down the main drag, here she came: a middle-aged woman, fit and not unattractive, striding along with her flag, her face set and angry. As she passed us, I snorted audibly. She screamed GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH! and I may have said something like, “That can be arranged.” That’s when she went off the deep end and began screaming at me, a regular Gish Gallop of invective, ending up by yelling that I was a “transsexual freak in a dress.” (I was wearing my kilt.)

So that happened.

St. Augustine, Day 1

Posted on by Dale

We’re on the road again, my Lovely First Wife and I, this time to St. Augustine.[1]

Technically we’re on our way to Bainbridge, and from there we will go all the way across Florida to the Atlantic Ocean. Why such a circuitous route? The explanation is, well, circuitous.

We have wooden blinds in our 90-year-old home, and every once in a while they have to be refurbished. The sun, you see, dry rots the webbing. The company which used to service these blinds was conveniently in Decatur, but the family who ran it retired and sold the business to another family, this one in Bainbridge.

So off to Bainbridge it is, a four-hour drive. Another four-hour drive to St. Augustine is a natural extension of that; at least that’s what I was told.

We just stopped in Blakely for lunch, at Smitty’s Grill. We recommend it. The staff was friendly, the food was good, and no one made fun of my Utilikilt (that I could hear, although I’m sure I was the cause of more than a little chortling—spreading joy, that’s me all over.)

Hentown, Cuba, Colquitt. (One wonders about a rural south Georgia roadside bar called Moby Dick…)

We have actually been to Bainbridge before, to celebrate the retirement of famed GHP media specialist Paula Chambers, and that’s how I know that landlocked Bainbridge is actually a seaport—the Flint River joins the Chattahoochee hereabouts, and a series of locks allows barges to float back and forth to the Gulf of Mexico. (It is a weird coincidence that those two rivers are the southeast and northwest corners of Coweta County.)

Did you know there’s a town called Attapulgus? Or that, off Highway 27 at some point, there’s a Newnan Loop Road? It does not show up in Google Maps.

Eventually we reached DeVenco Suber, the company owned and run by Mitch and Jan, a lovely couple not that much younger than we are, who decided in 2018 to buy the wooden blinds business from the family in Decatur. According to our research and theirs, plus astonished testimonials from prominent customers, they are the only wooden blind company in the United States.

After a tour of their facility and some discussion about the color of webbing, etc., we hit the road and drove across the panhandle of Florida, which is exactly as exciting as you think it it.

Since we live in the space future, I booked our hotel on the way. We ended up at Villa 1565, a charming motel on San Marco Avenue.

It’s nicely located, with the tourist trolley stopping at the courtyard, so you know you’re going to get two more days of The Oldest This, That, and the Other, plus the Fountain of Youth (or as I shall refer to it for the rest of the trip, the Fountain of Yute.)

We dined at Raintree, and we recommend it even though the bartender shook my Manhattan instead of stirring it.

On our walk down there, the full moon rose over America’s oldest Marian shrine.

—————

[1] The usual warning from said Lovely First Wife to all the readers of this blog who burgle homes for a living: Our house is not open for burgling. We have left nearly two wholly functioning adults there.

New Cocktail: Margarita Rosa

Posted on by Dale

This one was by accident.

See, I get multiple emails with cocktail recipes, and I transfer any that I think I’d like to try to a word processing document which, when it’s full, I print out and take downstairs to my cocktail lab in the kitchen.

Tonight I tried the Quill, a combo of gin , Campari, and sweet vermouth. It was good. But then my eye fell on a bottle of key lime juice in the refrigerator, and I bethought me of margaritas, specifically one I invented several years ago which involved an arból chile tincture.

Alas, the chile was too much — I think I used too much — so my brain decided to remix the thing with Campari instead.

Oh my.

Margarita Rosa

  • 1.5 oz reposada tequila
  • 1.5 key lime juice
  • .25 oz agave syrup
  • .25 Campari
  • 1 oz Cointreau
  • splash of blood orange bitters
  • lime, salt

Rim a highball glass with a lime wedge and salt. (I used a lime salt.)

Splash the blood orange bitters into the glass.

Pour the other ingredients into a mixing glass and stir (to dissolve/mix the agave). Add ice and stir to chill. Pour into the glass.

Enjoy.

This was quite tasty. Nice balance of sweet, tart, and bitter. I’ve had three.