Day 599: Thessaloniki

Left early this morning and headed north-west towards Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city. Navigated through the maze of streets downtown and managed to find a parking station, though it was a Greek style parking-station where an attended parked the car for you, door-to-door and nose-to-nose. Grabbed a quick lunch and headed off to check out the city's world heritage site.

This one is a multi-location affair, with a bunch of mostly Byzantine-era churches sprinkled around the city in various locations, about 15 in all. The oldest was one that actually went back to the Roman era, so that was quite cool to see. A domed construction, similar to the Pantheon in Rome.

We also looked at the largest church, from around the 10th century, and a couple of other significant ones. All covered in frescoes and mosaics and with interesting details as well.

Thessaloniki feels quite different to Athens - much younger (people-wise, I think it's quite a student town) and not as grimy either. Definitely not many western tourists here!

Our last stop was a monastery church up a hill just outside the downtown area, which we huffed and puffed up to, sweating all the while in the heat. Got there to find out it had closed at 4pm! Rather a surprise given that it was 3:45pm, but the man was quite gruff and unfriendly, so we departed slightly dejected!

Quite unusual as well, since we've generally found Greeks to be quite friendly and welcoming, particularly if you mention you're from Australia. Almost everyone has family in Australia, or at least friends who have family in Australia, so they tend to know a bit about it and have sometimes visited themselves.

Headed up right to the northern outskirts where our apartment was located. We were staying in the spare room of a friendly young guy, but he was heading off for the weekend so we had a quick chat with him before he departed.

Didn't sleep that well as the school across the road had some sort of cultural performance happening. People dressed up in traditional costumes, traditional music and so on, but the volume was very loud, and didn't stop until around midnight. Was hoping to see some epic plate-smashing, but alas they didn't do that.Read more