FOOD, FOOD & MORE FOOD

All we have been doing for the past two days is eating!  The food here is AMAZING.  On Fri. night (after my intense workout with Kate [girl in the picture with the white sunglasses]) we went to dinner at this adorable restaurant in Rio.  Rio is kind of the upscale suburb of Patra.  It is right off of the Rio Bridge, which you see Brian and I standing in front of in the top picture.  Rio has some of the best restaurants and bars for the summer because they are all outside.  The bars sit right on the water.  At the restaurant we ate souvlaki (chicken on a stick), kebabs (not what we think of as kebabs), pita, greek salad, potatoes (french fries, they eat these with EVERY meal), tsatziki sauce, everything was to die for.  Especially the kebabs, but Billy says not to order these everywhere.  They are a mixture of different kinds of meat and he said you never know when they'll try to slip some dog meat in there, EW!

Yesterday (Sat.) we went to Billy's house for a barbecue.  We were asked to bring two bottles of Havana Club Rum and we couldn't find it in any of the markets so we stopped at this OUZO store in the center and met the NICEST old lady.  Apparently she and her husband have owned the store for 40+ years and it had been in her family for 2 generations!  We will be going back there for all of our Ouzo from now on!  Brian's whole team was at the bbq (you can see most of them in the first picture above).  As you can see everyone was having a great time!  There was so much food, we almost exploded.  Billy cooked on a huge cement bbq, with a chimney and everything.  He bbq'd souvlaki, chicken, sausages and the girls were in the kitchen making Greek Salads and Caesar Salads and Potatoes and cleaning up after the boys!  Brian was outside manning the bar, making Mojitos.  It was REALLY hot so each boy would come inside in the kitchen and stand under the air-conditioning for a minute and then head back outside, it was pretty funny, everyone was sweatin, thank God for air-conditioning!  After we just about stuffed ourselves silly Billy came out with PASTA!  Amazing pasta with chicken and chunks of mozarella and parmagiano reggiano.  After that there were ice cream pastries and a cake and then that was it, no more food for a week.  This is when the party really started.  Billy started coming out with TRAYS and TRAYS of shots.  It started with this drink called Tedura, a dark cinammony kind of alcohol that was sweet but pretty good.  Then started Tequila, Vodka, a BLUE vodka.  The boys started to get silly.  Yanis, a player on Brians' team said, "do not worry!  We go get a cafe and all is good."  So Yanis, his gf Vaskia (sp?) Brian and I headed to one of the bars/cafes in Rio and Brian and I had a Fettocino (basically a milkshake with coffee) and then we came home and passed out.  What a day!!!