Thessaloniki (or Theonikolos as our pal Lisa called it!) is a fun town. The locals are gregarious and on our first day here we made pals with a fish shop owner, the woman who runs a green market across the street from him, and a couple shopping in a pastry shop. That's a small sample of the friendly encounters we had. Shopping or ordering at restaurants takes a while because people like to chat. It's refreshing after living in a city that lacks chitchat.
And people here love to eat. Prior to arriving we'd done research (as we do!) to figure out restaurants and other eating places we might want to try. Below is a small portion of the Google map we made to chart out these places, and the blue 'pins' are almost entirely eateries! To walk the length of this map is probably like a 15 minute walk so that's a lot of places to try per square mile! They love food and coffee, but man, do they love sweets, from bougatsa (a flaky, cream filled 'pie' that comes from here) to gelato, to all sorts of pastries, to candied chestnuts, to an incredible variety of cookies, and the list goes on. Sam's favorite
might be the trigona, a fried phyllo triangle filled with a sweet cream, but we have barely scratched the surface here.
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| Map of (mostly) eateries we're interested in trying out |
Thessaloniki doesn't have world famous archeological sites like Athens but it has plenty of ruins, and often these ruins are intermingled with buildings as shown in photos below. One of the sites, the Seven Towers, had a danger sign that we particularly liked (see below) for its sound advice that is equally applicable here or anywhere.
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| Ancient ruins amidst shops and housing |
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| Galerius Arch in Thessaloniki |
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| Part of the Seven Towers, Byzantine ruins that loom above the city |
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| Warning at the Seven Towers! |
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| Nice weather on a Sunday for promenading on the waterfront |
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| The White Tower, the symbol of Thessaloniki |
