So much have I complained that this year's winter isn't a real winter, in that we're already halfway through the season and it hasn't snowed yet. I've also found the guilty party. Global warming!
As of this morning, it started snowing in my part of the world. It's snowing, raining, snowing, windy and cold. I don't like it. Now I'm ashamed that I was angry that it wasn't snowing! Proof that we humans are never satisfied with what we have.
I now have winter and I started dreaming of summer, I wish for summer and holidays by the sea, I seem to have a fear that it won't be summer...
Our friend, 
Thassos, in the Aegean Sea.
I mean Greece!
The problem is that it's winter in Greece too. So I'm left with only the memories of my holiday. I will now turn to memories related less to the beach and sun and more to something equally important. Food!
I ate in Thassos and loved it!
First, I remember Limenos, the gateway for ferries from the mainland. When the town is starting to stand out and the proximity to the island makes the heart beat faster, for two somewhat contradictory reasons. Once because I'll be down to earth again. The thought of having dozens or hundreds of feet of water under the ferry has always scared me. The second reason, the most justified, is the joy of arriving, after such a long wait, on this island.
I also always remember the first beach I saw on the island through the car window. A rather blurry image is taken from the car speeding along the coastal road, the image of a beach for two.
To me, it seems like the ultimate beach and this is one of the reasons why I love Thasos, which has hundreds of such tiny beaches. You just have to look for them!
We humans are so different from each other, we have such different tastes... "some like jazz, and some don't"! When it comes to travel it's the same. Some love a place that others hate. Probably everyone has a good reason for doing so...
I like the village of Limenaria in Thasos the most.
How could I not like it, if here I found everything I like: the beach, even if not among the most beautiful on the island, pine forests and olive groves, taverns, terraces, cafes, street trade, a small harbor, old and new houses, friendly locals and mostly civilized tourists.
I tried to sort my memories by age. These are the earliest ones, from my first trip to Limenaria, which was one of initiation, discovery, and amazement at seeing life in Greece for the first time, life on an island. What was easiest for me to test first was the food. Even though it may be unbelievable but here I ate for the first time some of the things that live in the sea next door... sea bream, squid, octopus, and prawns.
And yet, my first meal was pork. My first attempt was to try some of the famous gyros, especially since I found a small terrace that boasts the best gyros.
I must admit it was very good. What's more, it was cheap and we even got a glass of wine in the house! It was something I wasn't used to... but which I quickly got used to, as I found it to be a general custom there. The next few days, when I went out to eat, I was more curious about what I would get on the house than what I would order.
Well, gyros were just something that is called "street food", a food on the run, although in Greece there is no such term "rush", in Greece you eat quietly, without a rush.
I then learned that the real Greek food I would find in tavernas. I had only heard of taverns in movies about sailors and pirates, where the tavern was a bad place, full of bandits, and where they drank a lot of rum. This image was quickly shattered, once I set off in search of taverns in Limenaria.
The first tavern. George!
The first octopus.
I saw on the street and wondered what it was doing hanging on the wire...
Then it ended up on my plate in George's tavern!
For most tourists, myself included, food is of great importance when choosing to visit a place, a city, a country. Food can say more about a place than the landscape can, food represents the traditions of the people, and only by knowing (i.e. eating) the specific food we can say we know those people.
I intended to focus in this post on the food of Thasos. I wanted to put as many pictures as possible of what I ate there but something happened that stopped me.
I saw the post of my friend from Hive and fellow countrywoman, 
A wonderful blog, a delight to read!
I didn't pay much attention to how I photographed the food. Comparing it to my colleague's photos, I saw what a mess I had made, felt ashamed and decided not to go any further. You can find it all, especially the visual beauty of the food, in the blog above, please read it, you won't regret it!
Because I've still written a lot about Limenaria so far, I won't give up talking about the food, but the kind of eating there that
Eating in the middle of the street, at night, in Limenaria!
We ate well at tavernas, we went to a few in the first days of the vacation, but I felt something was missing. Even though the food at the taverna is similar to the usual Greek food, it still seems to have something touristy about it, I think it's a bit embellished. I wanted to know how the Greeks eat at home and so I asked our hosts where I could find something like that if I could find a place where the locals eat, not just tourists. That's how I found out about Sotiros' so-called taverna.
I say "so-called taverna" because there is no building, the tables are set on the sidewalk in front of Sotiros' house. Cars pass between the tables!
Initially I was a bit shocked by the way the place looked. They only serve food there in the evening, after 7pm. We arrived early and there weren't many customers, we sat down slightly unconvinced at a table and... waited. Everyone waited patiently, no one was upset that they weren't yet asked what they wanted by the two waiters. Later we found out that these were the owners themselves, the women of the family prepared the food in the kitchen of the house and the men brought the food to the tables.
At one point, we asked one of the men to come to our table and he replied that he would be here in 5 minutes. It was 15 minutes before he came and I then told him that he promised to come in 5 minutes. He replied that he meant 5 Greek minutes!
Then I understood that time flows differently in Greece and I tried to adapt, which made me feel much better...
Now let me show you the food... Remember I said the pictures were terrible. First of all, we missed the chance to photograph the food before we started eating it. Both hunger and curiosity to taste made that happen. Then the poor light also contributed to the poor quality of the images.
The food is not photogenic, the plates are not artistically arranged and decorated, it looks like the food you get when you go to the country, to your grandparents.
It's not fancy but it's incredibly tasty!
Especially anything brought in from the sea because it's so fresh.
Since then, since that evening, I have only eaten there, at Sotiris.
This post was written primarily for #MarketFriday, this super long-running challenge created and curated by