I was asked by a visiting friend “How much do I tip the waiter?” The rest of us looked at each other and smiled – this is a favourite topic of conversation and debate… My group of friends is from all over – Greece, France, Canada, Argentina, America, etc. – each with a different perspective on tipping etiquette. From my own ‘let’s leave 15%’, to someone else’s ‘don’t leave anything’, and the natural questions of most visitors, I’m often left wondering what’s the right thing to do in Greece.

I read a recent blog in the Economist about tipping rules for hospitality services in the US – and I nearly fell off my chair. According to the piece, the ‘Gratuity Guide’ of the American Hotel & Lodging Association suggests up to $2 per person for the driver of the shuttle bus from the airport to the hotel; up to $5 per bag for porters; door staff should get up to $2 for hailing a taxi from the queue outside; and housekeeping should be left up to $5 a night. The lucky concierge should get $5 for making a restaurant reservation and $10 if he has something more difficult to do, like find a tricky theatre ticket. This 'culture of tipping' is being questioned in parts of the US, where a number of restaurants have started to apply a 'no tips' policy.

So, I’ve suddenly paid more in tips than I have for my hotel room. What are the comparative ‘rules’ for Greece?

According to WhoToTip.net: In Greece, it is customary to tip the porter/bellboy, around €1 per bag. Tip the housekeeper €1 per day, leaving the tip on the bedside table or bed. You can tip the concierge a few Euros if he provides excellent service.  In restaurants, tipping is expected for good service, especially if you are a tourist. Some restaurants in Greece will round up the bill, so you should check this before tipping. You can tip between 5% and 10% and you should leave the tip on the table, give it to the waiter directly, or tell the waiter you don’t want change. In some restaurants, the owner does not allow their staff to keep the tips. You may want to ask if this is the case, because if they don’t, you are just paying more for your meal. Taxis don't expect a tip, but you may round up the fare (+/- 5%) if you wish.

And so on… So many rules that I wasn’t aware of…! My Greek friends say “Bah, round up the bill or leave a couple euros for good service – that’s all you need to know.” (Then again, is it great service when they ask you 10 times if you need something else, or when they leave you to enjoy your coffee in peace??)

In the end, I think that tipping is a personal choice – but one that I always encourage. Especially in a city like Athens that should know how to treat visitors, to provide good customer service, and a culture that apparently dishes out ‘filoxenia’ as second nature. When someone gets it really right, I am generous. What’s more, a generous tip normally comes with my verbal appreciation of their great service – as in “We really appreciated your great service today – you were great.” Maybe this is more valuable than one or two euros, and encourages more of the same? Perhaps. In any case, I tend to fall on the side of generosity, and put it in the category of ‘karma’… ;)

So, tip or don’t tip, but do show appreciation for someone who goes beyond their sub-minimum-wage job description to make your hour-long coffee stop more pleasant.

Until next week,

Jack

The Economist – Gratuitous Expense

WhoToTip.net – Tipping in Greece

 

Dyeing red Easter eggs is a symbol of Orthodox Easter and a long-standing tradition. Although it is also quite common to dye eggs in other colors, Greek Easter is rarely or almost never celebrated without red eggs!

 

The tradition of cracking red eggs when the clock strikes midnight into Easter Sunday symbolizes new life, much like when a chick cracks its shell and comes to life. The egg-cracking game or "tsougrisma" as it is called in Greece is an integral part of Easter celebrations and the person with the strongest egg is said they will have good luck for the whole year!

 

Since Greek Easter eggs are not just for celebration purposes, but are also meant to be eaten, here are 4 simple tips for vibrant and perfectly cooked Easter eggs:

 

1. Leave the eggs out of the fridge for at least 3 hours before boiling them.

2. Boil the eggs in cold water–if you place the eggs in boiling water their shells are more than likely to crack.

3. Keep in mind that fresh eggs are less likely to crack, but will be a bit more difficult to peel.

4. Add a pinch of salt in the water; this will help prevent your eggs from cracking while boiling and make them easier to peel.

Easter in Greece is one of, if not the biggest holiday on the calendar. This means lots of family and friends, and lots of delicious traditions in the kitchen. We love this article from Delish where chef and successful New York restaurateur Michael Psilakis gives us his 'how to's' for a perfect and traditional Greek Easter feast!

Psilakis grew up with old-country influences as a first-generation Greek American. "Greek was my first language. I grew up just like My Big Fat Greek Wedding," says Psilakis. "That was my life, and everything we do (and did) revolves around the pride that my parents instilled in me."

Always on the menu: a special soup made from a lemon and egg sauce with plump dumplings of lamb meat braised in a liquid for over two hours. Following the special soup was the real star: a whole spit-roasted lamb. When Psilakis was a kid, his father built a "temple," as he calls it, in the backyard specifically for roasting whole animals on a spit. "We roasted 20-30 animals a year!" remembers Psilakis. Early in the morning on the day after Easter, he and his father would prepare for the Olympic day of eating by hoisting the lamb on the spit. After rotating for hours over a hot flame, the tender meat was ready for the oversized group of family and friends to descend, sticking forks into the lamb and eating it right off the spit.

Everything on the Easter menu is served family-style, including a big salad with lemony dressing and moussaka — lightly fried eggplant and zucchini layered with potatoes and lamb and topped with béchamel, all sopped up with the soft and sweet Easter bread. (If you don't have time to bake, many bakeries sell Easter bread during the holiday.) But the most important item on the table: red-dyed eggs.

Duplicating a feast equal in magnitude to this one may be a bit challenging without a roasting shrine and a team of family members to help out with all the dirty work. No worries: Chef Psilakis shares a few of his classic recipes that are robust, toothsome, and easy enough to prepare at home.

 
Psilakis' Recipes

 

 

 

 

To read this article in full, please visit delish.com

For Greeks, Easter is the biggest religious holiday of the year. Although many of the celebrations have roots in pre-Christian times - the Elysian mysteries in ancient Greece were also a celebration of rebirth after death when in winter everything dies and in spring they're born again - today in Greece, Easter celebrations have a direct connection with the Orthodox faith.

Preparation for Easter begins with Kathara Deutera (Clean Monday), which is the first day of lent. During lent, which lasts for forty days before Easter, one is not supposed to eat anything that comes from animals with blood in its veins. Basically, that means no meat, fish, milk, cheese, and egg. Lobster and caviar are fine, as are ouzo and tsipouro!

Not many people follow lent too strictly until Greek Easter, although it is common to quit for instance only meat or cheese, or maybe chocolate or wine - essentially give up something that is not very good for your health. Restaurants and fast food shops will normally have special menus during this time of the year, for everyone who does follow Lent.

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The big week, or as it is known in Greek 'Megali Evdomada,' is the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. Despite it being an ordinary work week, shops have special hours, there are church services every evening, and many people clean and prepare their homes in preparation for the big feast of Easter Sunday.

Holy Week is essentially a revival of Jesus´ last days when the Orthodox Church relives the last week of the life of Jesus. On Thursday Greek Easter bread called tsoureki is baked and the traditional red Easter eggs are dyed. On Good Friday you´ll hear the church bells ring all day for the funeral of Christ. The Bible said that he died in the ninth hour, and at nine o´clock Greeks follow a symbolic funeral procession. Many people participate in the quiet procession while carrying candles and the experience overall is quite solemn.

Saturday is the last day of lent and it is filled with preparations for the midnight meal, including a traditional soup called magiritsa. Just before midnight on Saturday everyone gathers at church with their Easter candles (or 'lambades' in Greek). Be there early in the evening if you want to be sure to get in, although there will be many people outside the church in the courtyard and on the street.

And then the big moment! Just before midnight, all the lights are switched off, as a symbol of Jesus' descending to the kingdom of death, and a moment later the priest announces 'Christos Anesti,' or Christ Has Risen. People start cheering, greeting, and kissing each other, and many fireworks go off.

Everyone carries candles with them to be lit by the priest's candle which represents the 'holy flame.' The tradition is that representatives from the Greek Orthodox church have transported to Greece a candle lit by the eternal burning flame at the Church of the Holy Grave in Jerusalem, and the flame is spread from candle to candle all over Greece.

Each person carefully carries their lit candle home in order to bless their home by drawing a cross with the flame above the entrance for protection from all evil. Many Greek homes will keep the flame burning in a traditional 'kandili' until the following Easter.

And then the feast begins! The 'tsougrisma' game begins when people break each others´ red eggs by hitting them against each other. The one with the strongest egg is said the have good luck for the whole year! The traditional saying is 'You close your mouth with an egg when lent starts and open it with an egg when it finishes.'

The first meal after lent is usually the traditional Easter soup called magiritsa, eaten after church on Saturday night. After the midnight meal, anyone who has the energy goes out to party until the next day...

On Easter Sunday, family and friends gather for a big Easter meal, which typically includes roasted lamb, loads of different salads, and mezedakia. On Easter Sunday, there is a scent of spring and delicious food across the entire country!

 

 

Greek Orthodox Easter is celebrated this year on Sunday April 28th, 2019. According to the Athens Commercial Association (ESA), the extended holiday shopping hours for Athens will start on April 18th.

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, 18 April – 09:00 to 21:00
Friday, 19 April – 09:00 to 21:00
Saturday, 20 April – 09:00 to 18:00
Sunday, 21 April – 11:00 to 18:00

Easter Week

Monday, 22 April – 09:00 to 21:00
Tuesday, 23 April – 09:00 to 21:00
Wednesday, 24 April – 09:00 to 21:00
Thursday, 25 April – 09:00 to 21:00
Friday, 26 April – 13:00 to 19:00
Saturday 27 April – 09:00 to 15:00

On Monday 29 April 2019 all stores will remain closed.

Traditional Cave Houses called 'Hyposcafa' renovated & especially insulated to ensure protection from humidity. Located in the best point of the caldera bay in Firostefani village. Amazing view, peaceful serenity, loads of sun yet just ten minutes walk from the heart of the island's night life Fira town, the capital of Fira town!

Sensyo Prices 2015

Prices do not include breakfast, but do include complimentary wine, juice, water, coffee and kitchenette in all studios.

Check In: 14:00
Check Out: 12 noon

• LOW (April - May - Nov): Double 98€, Superior Double 130€, Quad 150€ (+1 extra = +30€ 5th person)
• MID (June - Oct): Double 110€, Superior Double 150€, Quad 180€ (+1 extra = +30€ 5th person)
• HIGH (July - Aug - Sept): Double 135€, Superior Double 200€, Quad 230€ (+1 extra = +30€ 5th person)

We are loving this new space in the cool atrium of the Musuem Of Cycladic Art! The new Cycladic Cafe is a welcome retreat from the hustle and bustle of Athens. Whether visiting the museum or not, it is a perfect spot to relax in the heart of the city. Enjoy free WiFi, coffee, fresh fruit juices and even a light lunch in an inspiring modern Athenian space.

 

 

 

"Clean, crisp, fresh descried in a Doric way. We wanted the space to be a vessel for repose and contemplation were the design elements blend with nature and light and become the backdrop of the human activity. We believe that the space provides for a more serene and calm activity."

Hours Of Operation:
Mon-Wed-Fri-Sat: 10.00-17.00
Thursday: 10.00-20.00
Sunday: 11.00-17.00


Telephone:

2107228321


Location:

Museum Of Cycladic Art

Neofitou Douka 4, Athens, 10674


Website:

Crowds surge through the pedestrian shopping zone of Athens’s Ermou Street, past designer boutiques and a tiny Byzantine church that stands at a kink in the road like an island of sanctity. Kapnikarea church is at least 1,000 years old, though its domed roof rests on four ancient columns from Roman times, each of them stripped from a different ruin.

Those mismatched columns, so pragmatically reused, offer an object lesson about the problems and promise of Athens today. Six years of economic crisis, and several decades of thoughtless urban development, have focused many minds here on the task of building a better future from the usable past.

Apart from its classical monuments, Athens is not a picture-postcard capital. It is gritty, restless and spontaneous, as you can see from rampant graffiti that sometimes blows up into epic street art.

But the city seems to be rebounding from the depths of the crisis, which many say were touched three years ago. More and more Athenians are involved in a kind of civic infill activity, reimagining the town, improvising social services and engaging in what Greek photographer Eirini Vourloumis calls “a forced renegotiation of Greek identity.”

Athens is still living the hangover from the boom years of the 1960s, when Athenians were proud of the city they thought they were creating, but also strangely oblivious to the consequences of that process. Unco-ordinated development, fuelled by aid from the U.S. government, erased much of the city’s neoclassical heritage, and damaged the city’s ecology and infrastructure.

Now, ambitious plans are afoot to remodel the downtown in more sustainable ways, and to add cultural capital to civic life. Innovative restorations, led by artists and arts organizations, are reclaiming rundown industrial districts. There is a feeling here that creativity is the last and best resource when other resources fail.

Nikos Vatopoulos, cultural editor of the Athens daily paper Kathimerini, says that Greece “has entered its Weimar period” – a reference both to its political fragility and its creative dynamism.

Rethink Athens, a project led by the Onassis Foundation, will insert a “green spine” between two central plazas, starting later this year. The six lanes of Panepistimiou Street will be pedestrianized and planted with 800 trees, to become a grand promenade – with bike lanes and a tram line – between the neoclassical environs of Syntagma Square and the slowly reviving area around Omonia Square. Near the centre of that promenade, the Greek National Theatre is completely restoring the Rex Theatre, an art-deco building designed in 1935 that will become a three-stage theatre hub. Dozens of empty buildings along Panepistimiou will reawaken as cultural spaces through a citywide project called theatre of 1,000 rooms.

The Greek National Opera, which has expanded all over town with unstaged “suitcase operas” and pop-up performances, will have a new theatre as of next year, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s new complex in the city’s southwest. The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) has already taken up quarters in part of a restored brewery building originally designed by Takis Zenetos, a leading Greek proponent of modern architecture’s International Style.

 

Under normal circumstances, the inauguration of a multistory parking garage would not be newsworthy. But the case of the new facility opened by Athens metro operator Attiko Metro in the downtown area of Kerameikos is somewhat unique. The underground parking garage is located on the original site for the Kerameikos metro station, which was then moved 300 meters away due to archaeological discoveries.

 

The plot on the corner of Pireos and Iera Odos streets lay unused for years until finally things got moving and the underground parking garage opened in early March. It has five stories, with each level measuring 2,500 square meters and with a capacity for 274 vehicles. It is open 24 hours a day (a wise decision considering it is located close to one of the capital’s busiest nightlife districts) and is reasonably priced: starting at 2 euros for metro passengers (who have to display their tickets) or 3 euros for everyone else from 6 to 9 p.m., and up to 5 euros from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The ground-level “roof” of the parking garage has been turned into a green space and ceded back to the City of Athens, which originally owned the plot.

The story of the parking lot is strange, aside from the fact that the facility has been ready for several years but didn’t open until now. To begin with, it was built simply as a way to hold on to European Union funding. According to the original plans in the 1980s, the plot was intended for the new Kerameikos metro station, which is now on the main square in the nearby Gazi district. Excavations began in 1992 and the metro tunnel was supposed to run 20 meters underground, well below the level that the majority of antiquities in central Athens were found at. But archaeologists had expressed serious reservations about the location because of its proximity to the Ancient Cemetery of Kerameikos.

As it turned out, they were right. After five years, the excavations hit the western end of the cemetery, prompting a scramble to find a new site for the station that took on such controversial proportions that it was taken as far as the European Parliament. In 1997, the Central Archaeological Council laid the matter to rest by prohibiting the construction of a tunnel beneath Kerameikos. In the meantime, however, Attiko Metro had started building the station’s shell, spending some 5.8 million euros on that phase of the project.


To read more please visit: eKathimerini

The fluffiest and crunchiest Greek Easter cookies (koulourakia) you have ever tasted! These Easter cookies are quick to bake, fun to make, and very addictive to eat! With this old fashioned, mama-style Greek koulourakia recipe from you'll make a large batch of these delicious cookies, enough for everyone to try.

 

Have fun with the whole family kneading the koulourakia into bunnies, braids, boats, swirls, and  little "S" shapes. Serve over a hot cup of coffee and you have a match made in heaven.

 

 

 

Ingredients 

• 300 g butter 
• 300 g granulated sugar 
• 1 teaspoon(s) vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, medium 
• 120 g orange juice 
• orange zest, of 2 oranges 
• 50 g brandy 
• 1 kilo all-purpose flour 
• 1/2 teaspoon(s) baking powder 
• 1/2 teaspoon(s) baking soda 
• 50 g milk 
• 1 pinch salt 
• cloves, for the eyes
• 1 egg yolk, diluted in 2 tablespoons water

Cooking Method

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 190^ο C (375^ο F) set to fan. In the mixer’s bowl add the butter, sugar, vanilla extract, and beat with the paddle attachment at medium speed for 5 minutes, until the mixture is fluffy.

Step 2: Add the eggs one at a time, the orange zest and juice, the cognac, and keep beating.

Step 3: In a bowl add the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda) and mix with a spoon.

Step 4: Add half of the dry ingredients into the mixer, the milk, the salt. Keep beating for 1-2 minutes.

Step 5: Remove the bowl from the mixer, add the remaining dry ingredients, and mix with a spoon until the ingredients are homogenized. Continue kneading with your hands until a dough is formed.

Step 6: For bunny shaped cookies, cut a 30 g piece, shape it into a strip, and swirl it like a snail for the body of the bunny. Cut a 15 g piece, shape it into a small strip, and roll it in the shape of a fish. In this way, you will create the head of the bunny. Add a clove to create the bunny’s eye. Use a round 3 g piece of dough for the tail. 

Step 7: Transfer the cookies onto baking pans lined with parchment paper, brush with egg wash, and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Step 8: Let them cool and serve.