Yannina Visit

Yannina (also known as Ioannina) is one of the mid-size cities in the northwestern part of Greece with a population of about 170,000 located about four and a half hours away from Athens. What makes the city really unique is that it is located by a lake. I had visited there close to 50 years ago and had great memories from the trip. So, we decided to give it another try. Visiting Yannina ended up being one of our favorite parts of the trip to Greece mostly because the town was so beautiful and vibrant. There are always a lot of people around the lake and around the various restaurants and cafes. A lot of people were either locals or Greeks from other parts of the country because the city is not well known enough and doesn’t attract too many foreign tourists. Another interesting part of the city is its castle. It seems like almost every city we went to on this trip has a castle which was not intentional. And of course, we stayed at a hotel inside the castle.

We really enjoyed walking around the town. Walking by the water is one of the popular activities especially in the area between the castle and the lake where there are a lot of trees with good shade making a walk there even in the middle of the day enjoyable (as you can see on the left side of the picture on the right above if you look hard enough). One of the landmarks of the town inside the castle is the Fethiye Mosque built around 1430 by the Turks while they were occupying the area. It was heavily remodeled in the late 1,700s by Ali Pasha a very important historical figure of the time that has significantly influenced the history of Yannina. Ali Pasha (originally from Albania) was the Ottoman ruler (pasha) of a large area in the Western part of Greece including Yannina and ruled between 1788 and 1822. He had a lot of independence and was an intelligent but ruthless ruler. Eventually he turned on the Turks and was killed (decapitated) by them during the time that the Greek revolution was going on. He is buried (excluding the head) inside the metal construct on the left of the picture on the left above.

One of the highlights of the visit to Yannina was getting to a small island on the lake called the island since it’s the main island on the lake. It’s a 10-15 minute ride on a small boat from the city. I had very vivid memories of the visit there with my parents almost 50 years ago and I wanted to give it another try.  We were a bit unlucky because a big thunderstorm came while we were on the boat on the way there and it rained pretty much throughout our whole visit to the island which made the boat ride somewhat frightening and the visit not as pleasant. The most interesting place on the island is the Ali Pasha Museum where you can see where Ali Pasha lived for a period of time and was eventually killed. There are also a few restaurants there. We visited the one I remembered from my visit 50 years ago. It was still there.  What I remember in particular were the tanks with live fish and in particular eel which is what we ate 50 years ago. We didn’t actually eat there this time because the reviews of the restaurant were pretty bad (I didn’t say I remember the food tasting nice. I just remembered the eels because that was the first time I saw any) Fortunately, on the way back the storm ended. This was the only time during our six-week trip to Greece when it actually rained (beyond some short drizzles).

There were a lot of nice restaurants in Yannina and we tried a few of them. One of the things to know about Greece is that the appetizers are often the highlight of the meals (similar to tapas in Spain). I particularly avoid main dishes that have meat in them they tend to be heavy, and Greeks tend to overcook meat (Greeks will strenuously disagree on this). Also, often the meat is of mediocre quality especially when compared to the meats in the US. However, the Greek appetizers are amazing. We typically only order appetizers when we go to restaurants and that’s what we did in almost all restaurants we went to on this trip except when ordering a large fish which we typically shared. One more thing to highlight are the nice desert places. In one of them I discovered that they had baklava ice cream on the menu.  Baklava is one of the best-known Greek deserts, but it is never served as an ice cream. Even though I’m a traditionalist, I gave it a try and it was really good. Apparently, it must be really new because I heard about it on the radio soon thereafter. Opinions were somewhat split with many people being really offended that anybody would desecrate one of the country’s most traditional foods this way. If you get the opportunity, I’d say go for it.