Blogs from Central Macedonia, Greece, Europe - page 22

It’s past midnight, but noises of an unremitting spark in Life resound as if it were day. Yellow lights flitter on the sidewalks’ canopies streaming through to the concrete and decorative garlands strung over the traffic reach into infinity like a cosmic journey. The lines of ornamental lights pull at the city’s futuristic lever of style, traveling light-years beyond time. As Greece’s second city and home to a voluminous crowd of university students, Thessaloniki sleeps solely at the rise of dawn; it lives like a thumping jackhammer the remaining hours. The citizens roll their dice on Life’s board of backgammon. Obsessively, they’re transfixed as leeches desiring to suck the worth out of their rapidly modernizing center. Who’s Driving Your Bus? I arrived in Thessaloniki by chance, and with any board game it’s about playing with what ... read more

What 2 days these have been, What a rare mood I'm in, Why it's almost like.......I made it to the top of Mt Olympus!!!! Whilst only 2,918m, it was a fantastic buzz and hard work going up (on the lungs) and down (on the knees and ankles). From the beginning........ I left Athens with nothing more than the knowledge that the small village of Litohoro was the starting point for the Mt Olympus climb, no help provided except for a copy of the bus timetable by the Greek tourist information office in Athens! I caught the train to Leptokaria, caught a cab to Litohoro and then went in search of information and accommodation. The taxi driver had pointed up the road so that is the direction I headed. No 'pensiones' in sight, I asked the souvenir ... read more

We drove through huge mountains and the weather started to turn dark and gloomy, it was raining as we tried to set up camp in a town called Meteora. We all sat undercover and had dinner and played cards for a few hours dreading going back to our wet tents, although it wasn't too bad at least they didn't leak. Morning came quickly, its quite soothing sleeping to rain on a tent. We saddled up and went high into the mountains to the old monasteries on the cliff tops. Originally there were 21 monasteries that where built on top of these mountains. We were only able to go into one. What a life the monks who lived here (and still do in three active monasteries) must have had! With respect we put on the provided sarongs ... read more

We were told breakfast was at 7.30, so we made sure we were ready to go. I didn't sleep that well, the bed was really hard. Breakfast consisted of a boiled egg, and bread with either jam or marmalade. While we were eating, the church bell tolled just outside our window, and we didn't think anything of it, but the lady said the reason was because a man had died during the night. Kind of eerie. After breakfast I went for a walk to see if I could find some information on climbing Mt. Olympus. The lady at the hotel was being quite negative about the climb, and was insisting that we stay another night even though we had learned that it was to rain tomorrow. The conditions were overcast, although you could see the summit ... read more

So we leave Yeovil and end up in Halkidiki on the Kassandra peninsula in Greece for 2 weeks. We got to our hotel at bout 130am/2am and was to be up and at the hotel bar at 10am the next morning for our welcome meeting with the rep. That was a waste of an hour into our day the possibly couldve been better used catching up on sleep. Anyways we signed up for a meal and a quiz night in Hanioti for that night. We had a wee looksie around the village of Hanioti and found the beach which looked decent enough and a look round the shops which all sold the same things really but then its catered towards the tourists. Went out to the meal at an italian restrauant and meet some other people ... read more