Greece welcomed us with open arms, whereby our bus driver on the way from Thessaloniki airport to the main town decided to drop us (being about 50 fresh tourists) off in the middle of the road next to some roadworks. As an answer to our amazement and confusion he grumbled something in Greek which someone with a limited knowledge of the ancient and beautiful language translated to "he is not going to take you further, you need to get off"... so we all had to get off and walk. Thankfully we were already on the ourskirts of the central city part, so only a couple of kilometres away from our hotel. As we worked out later the bus couldn't go further because of some workers rights demonstrations. Who needs workers rights anyway?!
Above you can see a map of mainland Greece and the route of our journey. We spent three days in Thessaloniki and then having hired a car drove to Meteora for two days, then the Pelion Peninsula for five days, then off to Delphi for a night and finally to Athens airport where we flew out back to Berlin.Thessaloniki
This city was much nicer than I expected. But my expectations were high because I thought that nothing can compare to Athens. It was simply different. Much more relaxed and somehow more cozy. Athens has a very strong ancient history presence that is almost daunting, where as Thessaloniki seems to be more laid back and happy. Although it has many ancient sites, they're not as in-your-face, as the Acropolis is for example. One thing that all Melbournians would appreciate is the number of cafes... and even though the ones at the waterfront are pretty expensive, one thing we loved about cafes in Thessaloniki, is that no matter what you order, there's always a little something extra - like a little bowl of biscuits with your coffee. This makes a 10 EURs bill for two cappucinos a lot more bearable.
On one of our days we climbed the hills to the old fortress which provided us with some wonderful views of the town. Another day we spent in the two main museums - the Museum of Byzantine Culture and the Archeological Museum. I have to say that the first one has to be one of the best museums I have ever been in. It has perfect lighting and the building itself was designed specifically for the 'museum' purpose, so there is a lot of space, but it's not cluttered (which was certainly a BIG problem at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo).
Another highlight of the trip certainly for Jack was being trendy - or more exactly eating Trendies. 'Trendy' are these very special types of croissants filled with chocolate and sold in snack-type wrappers. We had them for breakfast in the hotel and unlike me, Jack managed to develop a bit of an addiction. For a while after we left that hotel I could see it in his eyes - the longing for Trendy. Could it have been Trendy love?! Ok, I'll stop now :)))
Meteora
This was a spot I've been dreaming of visiting for ages and it met all my expectations. These are 15-16 century monasteries built on cliffs, or rocks. These rocks simply stick out of the ground (ok, so all rocks stick out of the ground, but trust me - these ones do it even more so), and according to some stories we've heard, that part of the world used to be the ocean floor... hence the weird nature. The actual town there is called Kalampaka, and the hotel where we stayed was right at the base of one of these cliffs. Accross the valley from Meteora lie the Pindus Mountains and we could even see their snowy tops - very beautiful.
We ended up visiting four monasteries out of six. After the fourth one we decided that inside they all look about the same... and even though they're all cute and pretty, after a while it just gets boring. Even though we had a car we walked up to the monasteries on the rocky paths, and since this was our first "hike" since, I don't even remember when, we were pretty puffed out. After we did our tours of the monasteries we decided to indulge our "adventurous tooth" and decided to walk back into town right over the top of one of the cliffs and on one of the more 'alternative' routes. Perhaps it was because the only map we had was from the Lonely Planet... or perhaps because we followed a path that wasn't really a path, but at some point we ended up walking straight through some thick bush and coming to an edge on the cliff that went pretty much straight down. We looked at it for a little while, and then decided that there are better ways to hurt ourselves and retreated.
Pelion Peninsula
This peninsula is covered in little greek villages, and according to the Lonely Planet was the "hiker's mecca" *. I am not sure about the last bit, because having arrived to a small town of Milina we went on a walk following this time an actual proper area map... we followed the track route according to the map and came accross a dried out creek which also seemed to be on the map. We then walked for a bit and saw some red arrows and a path to some more red markings. Thus being the trusting people that we are, we followed this path and these markings, assuming that this was indeed the track we wanted to be on. As we went futher and further, the path became less and less, and the marking were getting harder and harder to spot. This is until the path disappeared completely, the markings seemed more and more random and we were walking through very tall grass and being scratched by blackberries. At this point nothing was feeling right, but we still saw some red markings, which kept giving us hope. After about two hours of this we came to a spot where there were red markings on every tree in our view... hmmmm... at that point we were hearing some chainsaw noises and thus decided to seek help with the locals. We came out to a grove of olive trees and two people who were clearing them. They were very happy to see us and even gave us a bottle fo water and two mandarines. Unfortunately they didn't know where the path was that we needed, so then after having another attempt at trying to find it, we finally found a landmark on the map and realised that we were in the same general direction, but on the COMPLETELY opposite hillside to where we wanted to be. At this point we have struggled through the bush for about three hours and walked a mere 4kms. So we decided to retreat - yet again :) To console ourselves we had to induldge into much eating and drinking that evening. Our hotel in Milina was right on the beach, so we spent most of our time at the dinner table watching the beautiful sunset.
One night we spent on the east side of the peninsula at Agion Ioannis, but decided that we miss the sunset too much, so decided to come back to the west. The rest of our time there we spent in a place called Kala Nera, where Jack even braved to go for a swim. It was here that we actually did manage to go on a hike and reach our destination and safely return. We walked from Kala Nera to Milies (a town in the hills - about 2,5 hrs away) following an old rocky trail and came back along the train tracks and even saw the little train not long after we got off the track. Thus we were very happy to have successfully hiked once.
In general we went at a perfect time in the year - right in the beginning of the tourist season, so some places were just opening up but there weren't that many tourists and locals at all the tavernas had a lot more time to chat to us. One such person was Christos - owner of the taverna Paris in Kala Nera. The food there was great, so we came there two nights in a row. He treated us to a very good conversation and to many shots of his homemade Tsipouro (its greek alcohol that one drinks diluted with water - like ouzo, but slightly different).
Delphi
As we drove from the peninsula to Delphi we managed to drive over an already-dead fox. We didn't think much of it until we got to the hotel, went to the sites, came back to the hotel to change for dinner and then! One of the back tires was completely flat. Now when we got the car back in Thessaloniki we found that most of the tires were pretty flat to start with, so we had to fill them up right in the beginning of our trip... thus we thought to ourselves - stupid Europcar! But alas - it was the fox! Jack changed it to a spare mini tire and we drove to a conveniently close service station. The mechanic was very quick and fixed the tire in about 5 mins. We were very lucky and one hour and a fox bone/tooth later we were able to continue our way to dinner.
Although this post is not complete without saying at least something about Delphi itself. It is beautiful! BUT I think after seeing so much beaufitul nature all along, it was not surprising that we were not overwhelmed and even a little diappointed. I think personally also after seeing so many huge and incredible temples in Egypt, anything else seems either more ruined or not as ancient :) Also if anyone is planning to go there, do the museum first, and then the sites, because there are no descriptions at the sites, so one ends up wondering what's what - and the museum explains it nicely.
The drive to Athens was thankfully uneventful, and the only highlight for me was seeing typical greek driving or riding behaviour that we already observed once on our previous trip there. That being - as we were driving on the freeway at about 100 kms an hour, we got overtaken by a guy on a scooter, who was wearing his helmet on his arm, smoking a cigarette and talking on his mobile... all at the same time! You go Greeks!!!
Some photos here...
* Now normally I would advise any traveller to buy their guides, but just not the Greece one - it has bad information about actual sites and also inconsistent information about hotels...
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