Thessaloniki

So yesterday evening we arrived in Thessaloniki about half an hour too late. The first mission was to find a hotel, because we didn't make any reservations yet. The first hotel we entered still had an available room and was not expensive at all, so we decided to stay there.

Hotel Rex, as our hotel was called, lies just opposite to the central railway station of Thesaloniki. The rooms were clean and spacious and we had a bathroom with bath tub. The only downside was that it was so hot, it was too hot. There was an air conditioning though, which made so much noise we couldn't leave it on during the night. We decided to go out for a drink and leave to airco running while we were out.

We walked through the old industrial quarters to get to the seaside. At the seaside we had a drink and enjoyed the lights on the other side of the bay. Since my travel partner didn't feel well, we went back to our hotel and luckily it the temperature was already much better in our room. During the night it was becoming so hot again that a good night rest was impossible.

The next day we got out of our bed quite late and decided not to stay in Thessaloniki, but to get a rental car and drive to Halkidiki. The Avis office was at the other side of the city and I thought it would be a nice walk. Since my travel partner was still not feeling well, I went there alone. At Avis they still had a spare car for us, a Citroën C1. I felt some fear, because is has a manual drive and I'm used to drive a semi-automatic car. But it wasn't that that gave me the biggest fear, it was driving in Thessaloniki, a foreign city with chaotic traffic. It took all my guts to drive from the Kalamari side of the city to the railway station, but I did it!

I picked up the other guy and my suitcase and we left for Halkidiki, but so we get to the clue, because to go from the station to Halkidiki without a big detour, we had to pass through the entire city again. There was a lot of rerouting on the streets due to the big works for the Thessaloniki metro project. When I got to the highway without any accidents and without my engine stopping, I was happy, because as from there driving should be easier.

We drove all the way up to Nea Moudania, where the Halkidikan peninsula of Kassandra begins. We wanted to go to Sithonia though, the middle 'finger' of Halkidiki. We did the entire tour of Sithonia by car and we saw the beautiful blue sea, the nature, the golden beaches, the sunshine and the blue skies. On the way we also stopped to eat a souvlaki sandwich and bought some fruit. After our round trip we needed a place to stay and thus found a not so expensive hotel at the beach (Akti Kalogrias), where we will spent two nights. First thing I did as soon as we were checked in, was dive into the sea and snorkel a bit. I didn't have to swim far from the beach to see some weird fishes swimming around. In the evening we ate on the beach as the sun was going down.