It's all Greek to us!

It took us a few days, but we are now finally on the Greece part of the Greece trip! We used up our confusing train karma for the trip (hopefully) early this morning in Munich by sort of but not really going the wrong way on the trains. By the time I realized the announcer was saying the train was going directly to East Munich station without stopping, it was too late. The Germans had fled and we were trapped until we got to East Munich station. Travel pro tip: if the locals flee, you flee, too!

At our newfound destination, it at least had a train that went to the airport. So…not all was lost, just delayed slightly. This is why we leave early. The new train was just relatively squishy since it was rush hour. Joy.

After a chocolate shopping spree in the airport and a quick two-hour flight to Thessaloniki (on which they served hot food for this flight that cost us like 100 bucks?!), we were finally to the Greece part of the Greece trip! Thessaloniki, being much farther south and on the water, was decidedly a good deal warmer than Munich. It’s going to be about 70 degrees every single day for the rest of this trip (until we go back up to London). Goodbye, puff vest (even though you helped me find my Asian Mom twin yesterday), back in the bag with you!

Thessaloniki’s streets are labyrinthine, narrow, and bustling as you approach the harbor from the highway. We witnessed a construction worker make use of a squishy cone and a chain to move someone’s illegally parked car out of a construction zone on the hill with minimal damage to the car. Very impressive.

Our lodgings are a spacious flat on the main drag of the city. We each have our own bedroom here (yay!) and there’s plenty of space to eat or hang out or have a Mario Party. Some things we have learned about Greece from the handout in our ABB and the internet so far:

There seems to be a mandated siesta time here that hits around 300-330 and goes until about five. Lots of things close early or close for a period of time in the late afternoon.
Our Air B&B owners request that we only run the hot water heater 20 minutes at a time. This confused us, so we googled it, and apparently “I left my hot water heater on” is the Greek equivalent of “I think I left my stove on.” With modern water heaters, there is much less of a danger, but we will comply with this rule unlike the time we thwarted Korean Fan Death repeatedly. On the upside, this means we can never fudge our laundry so badly and run all the colors together because there’s no hot water unless it’s explicitly turned on.
Don’t flush your toilet paper here! I have a knack for picking countries with this rule.
There are crepes to eat, but no bubble tea. This is not yet a thing in Europe yet and this makes me sad.

We wandered around the immediate vicinity to visit the Arch of Galerius and the Rotunda, and we also went to the White Tower. We succeeded in finding a tiny church near the Arch of Galerius, snuggled in the ground near some graffiti and modern buildings. The Byzantine layer of the city is down a few feet, so curiously it’s just kind of half-buried.

The Arch of Galerius is the remains of an arch built in the 4th century which linked the palace and the Rotunda. Because Galerius wanted to show off how much of an amazing ruler he was, he had this arch built. I mean, it’s still around today, so I guess he earned the title. Lots of pigeons sit on it and poop on it now.

From there, it’s an easy walk to the Rotunda, which used to have a lot of old mosaic tiles inside that have disappeared over the years. The mosaic remaining is still beautiful gold and there’s some color left, and it was used by a variety of religions and for many purposes over the year. Bonus feature: you can go outside and play the “how many cats are there?” counting game. I counted at least ten before giving up. It’s home to a lotta kitties.

Ruins dotted our walk back to the restaurant and seaside. Cats, of course, were napping in the ruins. We hit up a seafood restaurant for dinner and I learned that a grappa moscato is different from moscato wine. Very, very different. It had a good aftertaste but tasted mostly like jet fuel going down!

We finished the night with a visit to the White Tower (built somewhere around the 12th century), which is Thessaloniki’s iconic thing. It used to have some walls around it on the harbor, and was used as a garrison, prison, and a fortress over the years. Now, it houses a big spiral staircase around the inside and a museum about the city and its inhabitants. You can climb up to the top for some tea and to have a lookout over the city.