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Published: September 6th 2005
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Today we woke up at 7 am and drove to Thessaloniki. Was about an hour’s drive away. Couldn’t help falling asleep on the way cos had woken up so early. When we arrived there were loadsa cars. And we could see how different the Greek city was. We drove around for a while aimlessly until I pointed out we had a map of the city given by Avis. We stopped by at the Church of Agios Dimitrios, the guarding saint of the city. It was a well nice cathedral, with gold chandeliers I think. The toilets at the back were a bit icky though, it was like going underground to get to them. We then drove along the sea front to the White Tower, past a really nice square with lotsa nice restaurants which I wish we could’ve gone to but there was a one way system by the sea front. And kung and po got off the car and walked near the sea to take photos, and saw a statue of a warrior on a horse. We then drove off and got stuck in a traffic jam which lasted for about 45 mins, before we turned off and went out
of the city into the suburbs. We then tried to navigate our way back, and stopped by at a restaurant on the way, a really nice one which fortunately wasn’t a café! The people here barely knew English, before we stopped at a nice café and the girl only knew some basic words of English. We ate ‘fast-food’ which was of a very high quality! A mixed grill, chicken wraps and chicken skewers! Good for kung and po since they really liked chicken! It turned out to be a nice restaurant! we then went back into the city, and tried to find somewhere to park to go to the white tower again. We found one on street one, but strangely 2 different people came up to us and one said you can’t park here, another said pay 2 euros for one hour. But the latter guy disappeared. Was well queer. But the first guy (think he was a security guard for the bank) then came up and said it was ok to park here. Since we had stayed there unmoving for about 10 minutes! It was nice of him to say it though. We went up the steps of the
white tower and it was quite nice. And at the top we could see the whole view of the sea and the city! Took loadsa photos. We walked towards the archaeological museum afterwards, through the park. The city was hotter than halkidiki. The museum was nice, air conned, there was a rather tiger looking woman at the desk boldly telling us about the different prices to get in. she wouldn’t accept me as a student because I hadn’t got my student card with me. Had to pay 4 euros in the end. She wrongly charged JT 4 euros though although he was under 18, we later went up to her to point it out. The exhibit we saw was called The Gold of Macedon. But she hadn’t explained that there were other exhibits but they were closed. The museum was good, lotsa info and jewellery exhibits, although it was small and it was not worth 4 euros just to see that alone! Afterwards we went back up to the woman and asked her whether we could see the other parts of the museum but she said rather harshly that they were closed and she had told us already, and it
wasn’t possible to add extra money to see the better museum across the road because she had to record the purchased ticket in a book which couldn’t be changed. We told her kindly that she could’ve been more informative at the beginning when we were buying the tickets to inform us of the different exhibits. And before she didn’t really say much about what there was to see. She seemed like a tiger sitting there waiting for the money to be handed to her, literally. When we told her this advice about giving us more info, she freaked out and started arguing with us that she had explained everything to us before. She wasn’t even willing to accept a bit of mere feedback from tourists. Her attitude was terrible. Her boyfriend beside her was like’ what’s the problem’? it was well rude! Well we were trying to bottle up the steam and prevent it from exploding. JT afterwards did say thank you which was very Christian. I hope she changes. We walked back to the car afterwards and on the way we stopped by a very modern car park with a lift where you didn’t have to physically drive to
park the car! It was cool to see it. and experience alone haha. We saw an ancient wall ruin next to the bank which was interesting. We then started to drive back to halkidiki, asking a few non English speaking locals on the way. We stopped by at the Petrolona Caves on the way, the scenery was stunning! Fields of crops all red, green and yellow! We went to the museum of the cave and it was very interesting! Geologically and archaeologically significant! Lotsa quartz and bauxite tools. And a while stratigraphy section on display. The cave itself cost 4 euros (which was well worth it compared to the museum in thessaloniki!) and it was soo big. It was really cool inside too. Like an air con. Kung and po were fascinated at the size of it. there were carbonate staloagmites and stalactites in the cave. Never seen them before! And lotsa bedding structures and different kinds of rocks. there were many ‘halls’ where these structures were seen extensively. When we got back to hakidiki we went out for dinner with mum, who spent the whole day at the beach and the resort collecting rocks and reading! We went to
old tavern and had a roast chicken with mum again! It was nice!
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