Thessaloniki

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Final stop on my itinerary. I rented a place on airbnb that someone in Skopje had recommended. First airbnb this trip, as most cities had nothing much to offer in this part of the world. It was great - I rented a room and got the whole place because the woman renting the room went on vacation the evening of the day I arrived. Awesome!

The town itself, though, was less awesome than I expected. It's kind of ugly, but it does have cool ancient sites right in the middle of town to visit. And some good museums. And a TGIFridays that I might have eaten at. Twice. It was so sunny and so hot, it was almost too much. I could have taken a bus into the downtown, but chose to walk 30 min in and back each day. Which would be why I was always dehydrated and my shirt had salt stains on it, from sweating so much.

Getting home was a trial, as my flight was at 5:15am, so I decided to sleep at the airport. I took a bus at 9:30pm and got to the airport around 10pm. There I had a few seats to myself and read and "slept" as much as I could until 3am, when I waited until 3:30am to check in and go through security. There were many others doing it as well. Sucked for all of us, I'm sure. There were even mosquitoes in the airport and a crazy loud loudspeaker announcing flights that was scary as hell when you were half asleep. The flight left on time but the connecting flight in Belgrade did not. It left at 9am, rather than 7:20am, so I was rather tired and annoyed the rest of the morning. Slept a little more at this airport, got to Zurich late, waited too long for luggage, had to wait for a train to Basel...got home finally at 2pm and had the cable guy coming an hour later. He stayed until 5pm and then I had to hurry to get ready to see some friends at 6pm. I stayed for the fireworks (Swiss Day eve) an got home around midnight. A long day, but fun in the end. A boy did I sleep well.

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