Athens, food porn and brains revisited

Up, packed and out the door we were in order to catch our 9:30 ferry to Athens. There was a decent crowd waiting to board with us in Naxos but I wasn't worried about getting a comfortable seat since I'd purchased business class tickets for this 6 hour journey. It was our first time on a Blue Star ferry, having taken Hellenic from Santorini to Naxos and I expected a comfortable and serene space for our journey. That's the thing about expectations, though. Rarely do they match reality so it's best not to have them at all. Blue Star business class was packed with a few hundred people. There were the sleepers, who took up several seats at once or just curled up on the floor. Then the young crowd gathered in large groups, joking and arguing and carrying on as young folks do (dang I'm old). And next to us two older men played round after round of backgammon. The only way to get food or drink was to get the attention of the waiter, whose impossible task was to serve everyone in the room by himself. It was not a dull ferry ride of sure, but alas, it was also not at all restful. Since the ferry was packed, Alex and I were just glad to have seats of our own.

Arriving in Athens after being on the islands was a bit of a jolt. Athens is a large city with tons of cars and proper traffic lights. Our cab driver expertly got us from the port to our new home for 3 days, an Airbnb close to the Acropolis. Having come from our one-room at the Panorama Hotel, this place was huge, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a lovely piano room. And, once again, we have rooms with a view, this time of the amazing Acropolis and just below us, one of the oldest open air cinemas in the world. There are pictures on the wall circa the 1970s that were drawn by a young child and personal touches to the place that makes it feel like someone's home. I wonder whose life we've stumbled upon.

Okay, now it's time for food porn, a phrase that's been used to describe the posting of fancy meals for others to salivate over. Alex and I went to a two-star Michelin restaurant called Funky Gourmet, which specializes in molecular gastronomy. It was Alex's Christmas gift from me last year and we were both excited to try out fine dining together. In total, we had 14 courses of food, each so creative and unexpected and delicious. My first dish looked like a Cappuccino, but after mixing the ingredients together, it was actually a beautiful soup with rye croutons. We had a little picnic with several tiny portions of food, such as quail egg and fresh cheese and savory tarts. Unreal.

About half way through the meal, Alex encountered brains on his plate again, this time of the lamb variety in a dish appropriately titles "Silence of the Lambs." Apparently lamb brain can be delicious when prepared by funky chefs. Alex devoured the brains, as well as other delicacies including snails, sea urchin eggs and my personal favorite, truffles. Shrimp brain aversion is long in the past for the kid.

We had wine pairings for each of the courses, and Alex and I had moments when we were concerned about too many glasses of fine wine for our lightweight tastes. I think the wait staff noticed, though and poured less for us as the meal progressed. They noticed everything, which was kind of creepy and kind of cool. After the first course, one of the waiters came and shifted my dinnerware around, saying that she noticed I was left-handed and wanted to make my meal more comfortable. And never did we run out of water or wait in between courses. All dishes were served by two wait staff, one for each of us, and they worked in unison, serving and clearing each dish in the same order. This is not a dining experience either of us have had before and by the end, we were lacking any kind of adjective to describe our experience.

After a 3 hour meal we walked home through the graffiti-filled streets of Athens, listening to the living, breathing Saturday night sounds of our new city. And when we finally found our way back home, we sat and talked about how mental illness can put seemingly unbreakable barriers between sufferers and the rest of the world, how it takes something extraordinary, like the Funky Gourmet experience, to break through the noise of the brain to really feel life. And how that feeling is so fleeting. We also recognized that this trip is a sort of goodbye between Alex and me, as he moves forward on his own to conquer his challenges and I step back to let him. Tears were shed (mostly by me) and after Alex headed to bed, I was left alone in the living room on the floor (it was really hot, and the floor felt like the coolest place to sit during our talk) staring at someone else's ceiling in a country that isn't mine, letting go of my firstborn baby.