Wednesday, November 6, 2024
After seeing the ruins at Olympia, we were shuffled back on the bus for a short ride to a nice hotel, Touris Club, where the owner, Mrs. Vasso, greeted us and led us to the dining room where there were tables laid out for our lunch around the edges of the room. In the middle of the room were a couple long tables laid out with plates and bowls of ingredients and individual work places for the cooking demonstration.
Once both busloads of guests were seated, she asked for volunteers to come up and make three Greek appetizers, so I told Ken to go up there (he’s the cook in the family, not me!). All the volunteers lined the tables and donned aprons and sanitary gloves and awaited their orders.
One table made Tzatziki, a yogurt dip for bread, Ken’s table made Kolokithokeftedes, fried zucchini balls, and then after the tables were cleared and the balls were being fried by an employee, some cooks came back up to make Tiropita, small cheese pies (kind of like large cheese ravioli).
After enjoying all of the appetizers, we were led to two large round tables and a counter filled with different Greek dishes, so many that you couldn’t sample all of them with one plate!
While everyone was eating, the work tables were rolled out of the way, and two men and two women in traditional folk costumes came out to dance traditional Greek dances. While the men did a dance, the women disappeared and returned in black tops and pants with a red waist sash. While they danced, the men changed, and then they all danced more Zorba-like dances and urged the tourists to come out and do the line dances with them, which was a lot of fun!
Needless to say, back on the ship, when dinner time came around, we were not hungry, so just had soup from the buffet!
Tangible Roots 
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