Return to Greece
After Bulgaria, we had to get back to Athens for a flight to the US. We wanted to travel by train on this trip and so we decided to jump from city to city from Sofia to Athens. First stop, Thessaloniki. It was a huge city full of old buildings, some even ancient. We took a bus which was less comfortable than we would have liked but ended up at the train station in Thessaloniki which is exactly where we wanted to go to could get train tickets for the next day. It was such a stroke of luck that we got off a stop too early, and we were able to buy tickets for the next two days. We took a cab from the station to the hotel and were checked in immediately. The smoothness of this trip, over 100 days into it still amazes me. We headed out and down hill which I had read was the way to get to the water. We were headed to a shoe store to get new shoes, as I had put on more miles than my shoes were made to sustain. However, after a few minutes we realized most of the stores were closed. A quick google search and we had found out that it was an election day. The whole city, aside from restaurants had closed for the day. This is strange coming from the US where we give someone a few hours to vote, instead of the whole day. An obvious way to make sure the poor don’t have a chance to change things through voting. Yet another thing the rest of the world does better than us.
We ended up on the waterfront and wandered till we saw the white tower which was hard to miss. We continued for a short while and found ourselves debating a ride on the tiki cruise boat at the shore. Obviously, we did it. It was free if you got something to drink and was entertaining for the 30-minute ride. We disembarked and headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. I had found a few sites to see on the way to our dinner spot which had been recommended by a Thessalonikian waitress we had met in Santorini. Unknown to me, the spots I picked were up a steep hill and by the time we arrived at the first stop (a tower being renovated on the city wall) we were quite sweaty and disappointed. However, we walked a bit more and saw some great sites of the old city wall and the view of the lower city and the water below. We had a long walk to dinner and so we set off and chatted the whole way about our trip, what we learned, what we wanted to do for the next trip and so on. We arrived at the restaurant, to find a table outside set up for us. We ordered many dishes as a meze would typically suggest, since they were small plates and thoroughly enjoyed each of them. We called a cab after dinner and headed to bed as it was another early morning to commute to the next city.
Meteora was a place out of a fairytale and like nothing I had ever seen. We arrived by train and bus to this tiny city in the middle of Greece to be dazzled by towering peaks, capped with monasteries. It was spectacular to look at from our hotel room but we wanted to get closer and so we set off for a hike. About an hour later we had scaled the mountain and reached a beautiful monastery overlooking a huge valley. We wandered around inside the monastery and saw the disturbing paintings in the church like we had in Greece. After a quick cheese pie pit stop, we wandered over to a second monastery before heading back to the hotel to rest our feet before dinner. We chose from one of the dozens of tavernas in town and got some souvlaki before settling in for the night.
The next day we took the same bus back to the same transfer station where we jumped on train bound for Athens. I was excited to go back because we had some of the best gyros there and some other amazing food. I also needed to go shopping for some new shoes as it was evident all the walking we had done on this trip had worn out any support my current ones had. We got a souvlaki gyro which was a mistake because the pork gyro is what I actually wanted. It was good but the crispy pork off the rotating spit is something I’ll dream about. After lunch we wandered around Athens like we lived there doing sort of mundane things. I got a haircut at a barber shop, picked up some new shoes and got our laundry done. Its more fun to do these types of things in a city where you turn around and see epic ancient buildings. We also decided to do a second round at the pasta place we had life changing gnocchi at with Nancy a month before. We got a bottle of wine and some burrata and chatted away. The waiter was enamored with all the times we tried out our Greek language skills. He had asked if we were on our honeymoon and said we looked like we were in our twenties. We clearly tipped him well. Despite the table next to us having ordered the last gnocchi of the evening, we still got some excellent pasta and it was the most perfect way to spend our last night in Europe.
