Mikrokastro in the morning – Salonika in the afternoon

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Steve set the alarm for 8am and I finally managed to drag myself out of bed around 9am. I took a nice shower although I forgot to turn on the water heater and the water got a little chilly toward the end. I went upstairs and got dressed and asked Steve if he was going to get up. He said no and pulled the blanket over his head. I went back downstairs and had a yogurt but was still starving from all the fresh clean village air so I decided to make ham and eggs.I only cooked for me since Steve had said he wasn’t getting up.

Of course as soon as I sat down and started to eat Steve came downstairs and was like “WTF you cooked for one?” Em yea - I thought since it only took a couple of minutes to fry up the ham and eggs it made sense to wait until he got up to cook for him so it wouldn’t be ice cold. But Steve said he would have gotten up if I said I was cooking. Well of course I was cooking, eating is pretty much the first thing I do when I wake up every day. We agree to not agree on this topic!!

We went to visit Steve’s Thea Stella (Vasilli’s wife, Gioulis and Gianni’s mom). They live a few streets over from Papadia. Thea Stella gave us some coke light, some marinated fruit in syrup and some of her homemade cherry liquor. This liquor was much, much smoother and tastier than the kind we had in Megaro.

We needed to go by Papadia’s to pick up the keys to Vasou’s apartment in Salonika and they had lunch ready so we ate there before we let for Salonika. They are still fasting so we had stuffed tomatoes and peppers with rice, broccoli in olive oil and village salad. Basically we ate and ran! It was already 2pm and it was a couple hours to drive to Salonika.

Steve took some photos while I drove and he got some of a really cool cave high up in the hills between Mikrokastro and Kozani. We had previously decided also to stop at Vergina which is where the Royal Macedonian Tombs of Philip and Alexander are located. We had a little trouble finding the tombs, we turned round because we thought we god gone too far but actually we hadn’t gone far enough! Along the way we crossed over a really cool dam which was part of the area’s electrical grid. Well we got to cross the dam twice in each direction anyway so we got a really good look at it!!

We parked at the first place we saw a parking sign and then we realized we could have driven farther down into the town, but oh well. First we stopped at the WC then went and bought tickets to the tomb. I thought at first that they were a bit pricey at 8 €s. However the tomb area under the Great Tumulus was pretty awesome! There are 3 tombs inside the hill and many of the artifacts they found inside them are on display. They actually built a whole air conditioned museum inside the tumulus underground with access to the actual tombs. You can’t actually go inside the tombs but you can walk right down to the massive and elaborate doors of the tombs.

We really enjoyed this site especially since its Macedonian and Steve feels it’s more closely tied to his region of Greece. These are royal tombs and one of them at least is Philips who was the father of Alexander. We stopped and bought a book at the museum store on the way out.

On the walk back to the car we decided to grab a snack before we got back on the road. We ended up at Amaltheia Cafe and grabbed a couple hot dogs and Coke Lights. They were amazingly delicious hot dogs!! While we ate the owner put on a DVD in English on the big plasma TV with information about the area of Vergina for us to watch since we were the only customers sitting in the outside area. The owner of the little restaurant we ate at also had a gift shop right next door so we poked around a bit in there and Steve picked up a full size Greek flag, magnets and shot glasses. The owner, whose name is Bobby, had Steve try on some actual armor; a helmet, breastplate and sword and had me take some photos of him. What a fun guy! All in all this was a great stop and a highlight of the trip.

Back on the road to Salonika we made good time and had no trouble finding the apartment. We arrived around 5:30pm and lucked out finding street parking just a couple buildings down from Vasou’s apartment. Parking is very scarce in Salonika so this was a huge break. Vasou had warned Steve that the locks on both the outside door and the actual apartment door were tricky and boy she wasn’t kidding! It took us several tries to get into the building but once we figured out how to work the locks we literally dropped our stuff in the apartment and went out to see Ag Demetrios. The apartment was on the 6^th floor and has the typical Greek tiny elevator, gotta say I missed the normal sized elevators while we were in Greece!!

So off to Ag Demetrios we went and it was actually just around the corner and down a few blocks from the apartment. Along the way we noticed some delicious looking bougatsa and took note for later. We spent quite a bit of time exploring the church and taking photos of icons and relics. We wanted to go down into the crypts but they were closed. Well at least we saw them when we were here in 2007. Steve and I lit candles too.

After the church we decided to walk down to the waterfront area and check it out. We walked past the rotunda and the ancient agora, both of which were closed since it was getting late in the day. Also along the way to the waterfront we say some more VW Sciroccos (white, blue and black!) and an Audi TTS which was super sexy! I got Steve to take a photo of me ‘hugging’ it. I would totally have smuggled that Audi or any one of the Sciroccos back to the US in my luggage! On a more horrifying note, we also saw this woman(?) wearing at least 6 inch heels and these weird gauzy pants and a belly shirt with her big gut hanging out and she was hanging on to the arm of a man with a mullet that looked like a hillbilly! Of course they were walking the same way we were so we sped up and passed them and veered off so we didn’t hurt our eyes any worse!



We went down to the shore and took more photos. By this time we were getting hungry and Steve and I were both feeling chaffy thighs since it was sweltering and really muggy out. We started to look for a place to eat and ended up just grabbing some gyros at an air conditioned restaurant. Ahhhh next time I’ll think twice about wearing a skirt in this kind of weather. We walked back up the hill towards the apartment and ended up walking through the market area. It had stores and stalls with all kinds of stuff to buy. There was one stall that only had olives; a huge variety of different kinds of olives that immediately made us think of Rachel!

We passed by the church and got to Il Gusto, the shop with the yummy bougatsa and just had to buy some. We sat outside the shop and people watched while we ate. We also saw a crazy motor bike thing that was circular shaped. I got a photo so I could look it up when I got home. Back at the apartment at 162 we again battled with the locks! Once in we called Vasou and got the password for her internet WIFI and I was able to check my email for the first time in days. Aislinn sent me a message that Gilligan, my diabetic cat, was sick and she was taking him to the vet. Poor Gilly Pi.

We both did some Facebooking then took a nap for an hour or so. We had talked about going out, but ended up just hanging around the apartment. A couple of times we said we would get ready, but it just didn’t happen. At around 1-1:30am we walked back to the little shop where we got the bougatsa and got some tost sandwiches. The guy that made our sandwiches said he’d been to Chicago and he spoke English really well. He had us try the ‘cheese salad’ on our tost’s and it was fabulous! It really had a nice spicy kick to it.

After eating the sandwiches back at the apartment (the area to sit outside the sandwich shop was full of sketchy looking guys), we were super full and we didn’t even eat the bougatsa we bought with the tosts. Now Steve was wide awake and couldn’t sleep so he ended up Facebooking until 4:00am I had trouble falling asleep too, the beds were just wide twin size and weren’t all that comfortable. Oh well it was a great location and it was a free place to stay so not complaining. Well not too much anyway!

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Photos

Steve in Armor 1
Vergina

Steve in Armor 2
Vergina

Steve in Armor 3
Vergina

Steve and shop owner Billy
Vergina