City Thessaloniki

... Byzantine museum to visit, and an archeological museum to gander. My favorite site was the White Tower. It’s a big cylinder-shaped tower made out of stone that used to be the end tower where the sea met the city walls. The White Tower used to be called the Bloody Tower because it held prisoners once upon a time and many were executed there. It is white-colored nowadays because a prisoner white-washed it in exchange for his freedom ...

... that I might be here for longer than 10mins!!). I grabbed some spinakopita (not sure if I've spelt that right, but it's a spinach and cheese pastry!) and hopped back onto the train.., After some time I heard some one shouting I realised that some one calling my name!! Yep the border guard was calling out peoples names for them to hop onto the platform to retrieve their passports!! The most informal border crossing I've had so far!!<br>My time in ...

Hallo zusammen<br><br>und viele Gruesse aus Thessaloniki in Griechenland. Billigflieger fliegen selten in die ehemaligen Ostblockstaaten, daher sind meine zwei Fluege hier nach Thessaloniki in Griechenland und zurueck von Dubrovnik in Kroatien (an der Adriakueste, die sieht recht viele ...

We got back to Thessaloniki and we were going to have to spend the day there as the train out to Istanbul did not leave until the evening. Our expectations for the day were low based on our previous experience but we actually ended up having quite a good day!<br><br>We walked along the water front and saw a massive blue jelly fish which was quite exciting before heading to a pier that contained a few interesting museums and ...

... we were allowed on trains or not. We asked if we needed to make a booking at the station and they told us no but we then got thrown off the train in some backwater town because we didn't have reservations. A helpful Greek guy had come to translate between the conductor and ourselves and when we asked him why the conductor wanted us to get off he just shrugged and said "because he is an *******". We asked the woman in this station if we needxed reservations and she said we ...

... bit after a poor night's sleep. By 2 this afternoon, I was falling asleep sitting up trying to read. It's probably just as well that I wasn't behind the wheel all day.<br><br>Having walked around this city a lot, I have decided that the people of Thessaloniki love shoes and pastries. There are more shoe stores and pastry shops than I would think a city could support. I sampled a lovely toffee pastry last night and will likely try something else tonight.<br><br>I also did ...

... early. And I've learned a few Greek words so far, but I unfortunately cannot say 'goodbye' to properly end this email. I can say 'yasas' (hello) and 'efharisto' (thank you). And as if this country wasn't hard enough to understand as it is, 'ne' means yes, and 'ohi' means no - good luck to me! haha! I've just got to add that times like these have made me love Starbucks - it's consistency has provided me with comforting familarity in otherwise foreign places! (UPDATE, Nov. 8: pictures added!)

... away. I said bye and when I caught up with them a hostess was agressively suggesting we sit at her bar. Of course Allie and Megan didn't want to be rude so we got ushered to an outside table that had small little couches for seats and it was pretty comfortable. Since our orginal plan was for dessert and we weren't keen on getting drinks, we flipped through their menu to see what they had. Before we had a chance to do so however, our waiter came by and handed out three ...

... The roads are pristine here, like a newly paved road all the way. The tunnels through the mountains were very interesting; we must have gone through 40 or so of them. <br><br><br>Had a little detour along the way. They tend to take red tape and cross out locations on signs throughout the country so it makes it somewhat difficult to figure out where to turn next. Curtis enjoyed the windy 90 degree turns along the route here, especially in the little box of a car we have. We had our ...

... says: It felt great to be back in a real city. Thessaloniki is a hip, modern metropolis. We stayed in an actual hotel near the waterfront, where I got to swim in the rooftop pool (I hate pools, but, oh well) and Michelle got to work up a sweat in the private gym. We didn't do much sightseeing in Thessaloniki. We were getting a little homesick, so we had American style burgers at a popular restaurant on the Pier, then we went to the cinema and watched Nicole Kidman battling an ...