Greek Honeymoon – Part One

Miss Yunks just spent 10 days touring around Greece on her honeymoon.  I’ve always wanted to go to Greece for my honeymoon and I’m so glad that we did!  The food was fresh and delicious, the views of the sunset were beautiful, and the beaches were all so unique. We spent time in Athens, Santorini, and Crete.  Coming off of my wedding diet, I did not hold back at all when it came to desserts.  I think we hit four bakeries on our first full day in Athens.  Let’s have a look.

I had been seeing these pastries all over the city and we finally stopped to try one.  It looked like a whoopie pie, but did not taste like one.  The cake ends were soaked in honey so they were sticky, soft, and sweet.  The middle was thick like a marshmallow and the top had just a smidge of chocolate icing.  This treat was sweet with a hint of chocolate;  I prefer American whoopie pies much better but enjoyed trying the Greek pastry.

We of course had to try baklava.  There are several versions of baklava in Greece.  It comes in different shapes and sizes and sometimes has other ingredients added in, like different kinds of nuts.  Our first taste was the traditional baklava in small triangles.  The pan is sitting in honey and when the store clerk served our piece, he dipped it in honey to ensure it was totally coated.  This small bite was the best baklava we had during our trip.  I kept trying it at different bakeries and larger ones that looked amazing did not compare to the small one.  It was perfectly flaky with the right proportion of nutty filling and the honey was not too intense in a small bite.  This same bakery also had cookies, among plenty of other pastries.  I was surprised to see they use silpats!

I received a silpat at my bridal shower and have yet to use it.  I can’t wait to see how it changes my cookies!

Next up, we walked by a macaron bakery.  These macarons were a little bigger than the French macarons we have here but the cookie and filling were very similar.  I tried a cookies flavor, which we would call Oreo, and a strawberry.  The cookie part was soft and probably has less meringue than I’m used to, and the middle was amazing buttercream frosting.  The bakery also had creative cakes on display.

Although tempted, I drew the line at ordering a whole cake.

Athens has as many bakeries as Boston has Dunkin Donuts.  They’re everywhere, and I loved it.  Interspersed with hitting all of the bakeries, we walked through a unique market that doesn’t quite compare to anything in Boston.  My least favorite part of the market was the meat section.  Picture an outdoor warehouse type space with rows of raw meat hanging at counter after counter, and me shielding my eyes staring at my feet just trying to get through.  But the Mr. loved it.  After we made it through the meat market, we saw vendors selling everything from individual spices to candies to fresh produce to random tchotchkes.

Olives are quite inexpensive in Greece, and taste much better than any olive I’ve had in Boston.  Mr. stocked up on olives when I went on my dessert binge.

Oh, yeah, we saw the tourist sites too.  I mean we had to something between all the eating.  We saw the Acropolis up close and personal in the morning, and in the evening we saw it from a distance while we enjoyed a picnic dinner on our hotel’s roof.

It may be hard to tell from this photo, but that’s the Parthenon in the distance.  Our hotel was not only in a great location for touring the city, close to markets, shops, restaurants, the train, and some tourist sites, but it also had a wonderful breakfast buffet. I love breakfast buffets and this one was perfect for our needs.   Each morning we had a variety of breads, pastries, cereal, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, feta, greek yogurt, honey, fruit and coffee.  The spinach and cheese pinwheel pies were my favorite spinach pies of the trip.  The pinwheel was flaky without being overly buttery, the spinach looked and tasted fresh and the ratio of all ingredients was right on point.

And this was just Day One of our trip!  Stay tuned for more good eats from Santorini and Crete!