We planned to go into Thessalonika today and, had asked about buses from the campsite. I discovered that one of the people working here is English and had married the son of the campsite owner. This meant that we could have a good discussion about the buses and our options for travelling home next week and storing the van. The first issue was the buses – there are lots of buses to Thessalonika that leave from the main road just a few hundred metres away but they have recently moved the bus station and it is now out of the city centre. A further two buses are required to get into the centre, making it a complicated and time-consuming operation. Likewise, she though that getting to the airport would involve a taxi from the bus station (likely to be expensive) or three bus journeys. We decided to take her preferred option to get into Thessalonika today – parking in the Ikea car park and taking a bus into the centre. This worked very well and is a good tip for anyone wanting to visit Thessalonika from the Halkadiki direction. Ikea is close to the huge Cosmos shopping centre, signed off the main road from Halkidiki and parking in the car park without visiting the store seems to be accepted practice. Next to the car park is a new bus station and we took the number 8 for a long but straightforward journey in. Unfortunately, we didn't realise how long the journey was and got off far to early at a stop that had a similar name to the one that we wanted. After asking for directions and discovering that we were still 5km away from the centre, we caught the next number 8, some twenty minutes later.
We decided to find the Tourist Information Office first, so that we could ask about campsites closer to the city. We followed our old Rough Guide map to where the office was shown – nothing. I asked in a couple of cafés but nobody knew where it was and we were finally directed to the Tourist Police. They said that the office was closed but volunteered to help. Our request – where we could store a motorhome for six days and travel to the airport – was, understandably, too complex for them. Time was getting on and we decided to have lunch, which would still leave us time to visit the Archaeological Museum before it closed at 3 pm. We had an excellent lunch and then walked towards the museum only to find an open Greek Tourist Office on our route. This was less than half a kilometre from the Tourist Police, who obviously did not know that it existed! We went in and explained our requirement. They suggested a campsite that had also be mentioned by Sikia Camping (in the Pelio), Retzikas. The people at Sikia couldn't tell us where it was, they only had the name, but now we had a location – Epanomi. This unexpected stop meant that we would only have had about 30 minutes at the museum before it closed, so we wrote it off. Back then to an Internet Café that the Tourist Office had told us about. This was quite close, very large and reasonably priced. However, when we enquired they told us that they didn't have wireless, nor could we connect the laptop to their network. They directed us to a Starbucks with free wireless Internet just a few streets away. We found it close to a large Roman arch and I decided to test out the Internet before we bought any of their very expensive coffee – it didn't work. This was turning into a disaster! We returned to the Internet Café and used the USB key to update the blog and checked the emails. Two hours later, we had caught up with everything – success at last!
The area around the Internet Café and Starbucks was interesting with (scant) remains of a Roman palace, the Roman arch and the Rotunda, a Roman mausoleum that had been converted into a very early church in the 4th century. Unfortunately the Rotunda closed at 3 pm, so we couldn't visit it. We will have to return to the city some time when, hopefully, we will be able to achieve a little more!
We returned to Ikea on the number 8 bus and on the way we looked at the map provided by the Tourist Office and the location of the campsite. We realised that the campsite was the very basic, €5 per night, site that we had seen on Sunday. It was still a long way out of Thessalonika and would have the same problem with buses to the airport. Despite the cost (€25.50 for the first night and €0.50 per hour thereafter), we decided that the airport long-term parking was our best bet. We called in at the airport on the way back and confirmed that they would accept the motorhome in the car park.
Jane pointed out that we could have gone to Nea Moudania (close to the campsite), had a good meal and used one of the many Internet Cafés there, and they had a market this morning. Still we wouldn't have had all that excitement of visiting Thessalonika!
Photos: The Rotunda in amongst the city buildings – below the street level between the camera and Rotunda were remains of the Roman palace baths(?) and out of view but to the right, a little closer to the Rotunda is the Roman Arch.
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