The Week of the North

As I said in my last post, we left for northern Greece on Sunday and spent basically all day traveling. The bus first took us through the mountain monasteries at Meteora, where I lost weight and my pants gained weight. Later that night we arrived in Thessaloniki and had a nice hotel. We expired a little but got to bed because we knew Monday would be rough. Monday consisted of walking. We walked for over 9 hours around Thessaloniki, and I'm usually fine walking for a long time but it was the drastic elevation changes and terrine shoes I mistakenly packed. I paid for it because days later they still hurt. We went to the upper city where the ancient walls of the city still stand. It was definitely upper! The rest of Monday included a couple of Byzantine museums and walking around markets. A few of us went out Monday night to see how expensive everything, specifically drinks were, and they are expensive. Keeping myself on a tight budget, I only had one drink all week which was an overpriced beer. Nonetheless Monday night was still fun checking out what Thessaloniki did for fun.

Tuesday was again a lot of walking and there was two museums. The modern art museum was incredibly interesting. The art and "art" I saw in there was quite cool. We didn't do as much Tuesday night because we knew we would want to check out Volos the next night. We woke up early Wednesday and left for Volos, first stopping at the King Philip II/Alexander the Great museum on the way. What made this museum cool was that it is underground and housed many tombs of the great leaders, their armor and weapons, and graves stones and other things that honored the dead. From there we went to Volos, which is another city on the coast. From the base of the mountain that is Volos, we could see houses and buildings built all the way up. Little did I know the bus would be headed there next, so for over an hour it worked its way up and back down the slopes. I was shocked how high it was and how long it took. And of course I was a little basket case filled with terror. Although I was nervous, once we got to the top it was an incredible view and a great experience despite the cold. After working our way back down and getting into our hotel Graham and I got dinner. It was after we had our regular gyro that Zach walked in and told us he had just had a foot long gyro.

The four of us and Misha went out that night to a place Misha was told was a good and cheap place. It was a hookah bar and was relatively cheap. Although I hardly care for hookah it was fun. Then Misha did what he does best and asked a group of people what kind of places there are to go at this hour and what there is to do. We left with them and we were all going to a restaurant but they were already closed. Instead they had us follow them to "old town" or some other part of town. They were hoping to get us into a restaurant with live Greek music but they were packed. At this point all hopes seemed lost for anything until the group yelled at us that there was room inside. So we piled into the small room that was over loaded with Greek locals, and I know I stuck out like a white boy in Texas. Everyone in the place knew what was going on because they were singing and clapping and having a ball. We were generally confused but we soon were able to at least clap along. Later when I thought to myself, "surely it has to be over by now" it just went on and people began to dance. The music literally never stopped and even a couple of us got up to dance with them. I had to sit out "dancing" to document this most embarrassing moment for some. We were there much longer than I had expected we would but it was a great experience of the Greek culture, whether I understand it or not.

Thursday morning we got up and began to head back to Athens. On the way we stopped at Thermopylae, the area where the 300 Spartans fought the Persians. We were not able to actually go into the narrow passage because it is more difficult to do in an hour. We just stopped at the modern day monument of the site. From there we could see the ridges that made up the passage. In the pictures I took of it, I was standing were the sea used to be, which made more sense as to why the passage was one of the only ways through the area. We were all dying to go into the passage and reenact the movie but there just wasn't time.

From Thermopylae we made it to Athens, and I ventured off alone to a cheap hostel to prepare for my flight to Berlin the following morning. The hostel was extremely cold all night. The bottle of water I bought for dinner warmed and when I woke up it was nice and cold again. I was shivering for hours after. I basically spent all of Friday traveling myself. From the hostel I walked to the bus that would take me to the airport then flew to Berlin. I had to wait for Niki to get back from a trip so I had the rest of the day to myself there. I went out on limb, got on a bus and train, and stopped at many stops to see what all they had to offer. The little food I had was very good and quite different from Greece. After carrying my heavy backpack all around two cities all day I am very worn out and as I write this I am still waiting for Niki to arrive. In a few hours I'll see her again, and it just happens to be our one year anniversary. 

Thessaloniki

Modern art museum

King Philip II's armor

Volos

Thermopylae

Thermopylae monument