It's All Greek to Me

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April 4 - 5
Friday April 4
After a great breakfast, provided by our hotel, Kia, James, and I ventured out into the rain that was coming down on Thessaloniki. We made out way to the Archaeological Museum and spent some time there looking at the statues and jewelery. The jewelery was so amazing and intricate. And the fact that it had survived for thousands of years was unbelievable. Of course, we had problems reading the signs as they were all in Greek, and Greek not only is a foreign language but uses a totally different alphabet. This could make anything a problem - from pronouncing street names to figuring out where trains were going to ordering food in a restaurant. After we had exhausted the Archaeological Museum, we ventured to the Byzantine Museum where artifacts from the Byzantine Christian churches were on display. The artwork was wonderful, and I even managed to find a few depictions of St. George. IT was interesting to see how the Byzantine artwork differed from that of the Romans. Unfortunately, the museum was closing at 3 so we were hurried through and didn't get to spend as much time as we would have liked looking at everything. Back outside it had stopped raining, thankfully, and we went in search of lunch. Our first goal was to find a restaurant that had and English menu and English speaking staff.We succeeded and had burgers - not Hard Rock quality, but still good. Then we went back to our hotel room and watched Greek cartoons for the rest of the afternoon and a movie that night. Everything else was closed, what else were we supposed to do?
Saturday April 5
Once again I found myself on a train back to Athens. It was a 7 hour ride this time - last time it was only 4.5 - and it was very boring. I finished a book and tried to sleep, but didn't succeed. There were too many people on the train and it was noisy. We finally reached our hotel at 7:45, dropped our stuff and went to find dinner before calling it a night.

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