Easter with Dina

Sunday, April 20th, 2014 Naxos

 This is the full view of the "Koulas Pension" that we saw yesterday. I'm pretty sure that it's owned by a long lost relative of Anita's "Coulas" family.

Here's the owner hard at work behind the shed. Note the strong family resemblance.

 After breakfast in our apartment this morning, we walked the full length of Agios Prokopios Beach, then Agia Anna Beach and finally about halfway down Plaka Beach. On the point between Anna and Plaka, Anita stopped to look at this little church. On our way back we laid on the rocks here for awhile out of the breeze and just enjoyed the sun. Today was much warmer than yesterday and not nearly as windy. Tomorrow is supposed to be even better. We walked through the village on the way back so I could find an ATM for some cash. As we went along, all the local families were out on their patios celebrating Easter with a few drinks while roasting whole lambs on a spit while the kids let off firecrackers.
We got back to our apartment, had a small salad for lunch and sat outside enjoying the sunshine. We were just warming up to the idea of happy hour when Dina, the owner, came up the stairs and invited us for Easter dinner on the patio. We joined Dina, her husband Costa and her 2 university age children along with 2 other women who are here from Germany. Costa spent most of his time grilling lamb on the charcoal BBQ while the rest of us ate an Easter feast.

 The first thing to do was to each take a decorated hardboiled egg and try to break the other person's egg with it. Dina is showing me how. When both ends were cracked, you were out. I'm not sure who won. Dina had prepared a fantastic meal of roast potatoes, green salads, a bean salad, tzatziki, olives, some lamb roasted in the oven and some on the BBQ, pita bread and red wine.

 We had lots of fun talking about all kinds of things. Both kids have taken private English lessons for years, as do many Greek children who can afford it. The school English lessons are apparently very poorly taught. The daughter is studying in Thessaloniki to be a physical therapist and the son is in the police academy in Athens.

After dinner Dina brought out a special Easter dessert  with flaky crust, thick vanilla custard and tons of whipped cream. We washed it down with a few glasses of ouzo. We were stuffed.
As the sun slowly went down, it got a little cool on the patio and after about 3 hours we all finally left. If you're away from your own family at Easter, Easter Sunday dinner with a generous family in the Naxos village of Agios Prokopios must be the next best thing.