A return to Thessaloniki

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A little more than four years after first visiting Greece, I found myself back in Thessaloniki for a long weekend. Since that visit was at the end of a very long ferry-bus-train trip, I found myself much more relaxed and awake after only a five hour drive split over two days. We spent Friday night in Skopje and drove the rest of the way on Saturday morning. As we entered Thessaloniki, we were stunned by the brand-names we saw - Nike, Underarmor, Gap...the list went on and on. Needless to say, we spent Saturday afternoon wandering from shop to shop and enjoying the late fall weather. On Sunday, all of the shops were closed but the tourist attractions were running. We walked down along the shore and visited the White Tower - where the eastern wall of the old city once ended. The display inside was very well done, but all in Greek so while we enjoyed the pictures and the view from the tower, we could glean very little from the display itself. The ceilings were very low and I constantly feared hitting my head - especially on some of the very low doorways - about half only came to my shoulder! After the White Tower, we found out from one of the tower workers that there was a Cultural Tour Bus that you could hop on and off all day for just 2 euros - what a deal! For the rest of the afternoon, we rode the bus and stopped to see some of the churches. Making our way back down to the city center, we had some dinner - live music included - and made our way back to the hotel. On Sunday, we did some grocery shopping - yay, I found Powerade! - and headed back to Prishtina. Though short, it was a good weekend away.

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