Gyros and Fish

We got into Thessaloniki early yesterday morning after a long train ride from Sofia. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get much sleep due to the exremely long border stops to check our passports.

We found accomodations at a hotel for relatively cheap which wasn't too easy. We tried quite a few places before we could find something reasonable. It's real easy to get spoiled when you can stay in most hotels in Eastern Europe for about $12 a night - not in Greece you can't!!

I took a nap and went out exploring. Thessaloniki is the second biggest city in Greece in the region known as Macedonia. It's way up north and is close to the border with the country of Macedonia (with which there is a big argument over the name) and the border with Turkey. Mt. Olympus is nearby which is the tallest mountain in Greece and the home to all the old Greek Mythological gods. I wanted to climb it, but it takes several days and I think that's a bit too much committment for me. Thessaloniki is also on a large bay in the Aegean Sea. Overall there isn't a whole lot to do here other than normal big city stuff so we've spent most of our time walking along the sea wall and drinking cold beer in the seaside cafe's. Sorry to anyone I might offend, but the girls here aren't nearly as nice looking as they've been over the rest of Eastern Europe, but the service in restaurants is WAY better. The food here is really good, too. The first thing I wanted was a gyro to see what they are like here. A little bit of a let down, they are about the same here as anywhere else, but they are all over and they serve them much better. We also found a cool local place to eat. It was packed full of locals seated on little plastic tables outside. We asked for a menu and the guy told us they serve only one thing, fish and chips, and how many do we want - 1 or 2. They brought out a HUGE chunk of fried fish, sliced fried potatoes and peppers all on butcher paper. It was great.

This morning I bought a plane ticket to Thailand direct from Athens leaving on Nov. 8. That will give me exactly 3 weeks to goof off here. I also bought a ticket on a ferry to an island called Santorini. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful and one of the most popular. We stop at three other islands on the way and it takes almost 20 hours to get there. The ferry looks huge, about the size of a cruise ship, with a pool and a couple of restaurants. They sell several different types of tickets and we sort of splurged and upgraded from 'deck' tickets where you literally sleep on the deck. We went second class which gives us a cabin with a communal bathroom. We plan on hanging in Santorini for a while and renting mopeds to cruise to the good beaches and taking day trips to some of the other smaller islands around. Then I think we'll head to Crete which looks pretty cool too. Shouldn't be a lack of places to go as Greece has over 1,200 islands to explore.