Driving 6 hours through rural Albania and Greece, we appreciated the agricultural scenes, the long tunnels through mountains and the small towns off the highway. Notable is that in Greece, we saw very few people working the fields or anywhere outside the city, for that matter. As you cross the border into Albania, every field is filled with folks turning the soil by hand and donkey carts carrying wood, greens, produce or a tired wife!
Thessaloniki is in the north eastern part of Greece, a city maybe of half million people. It has a big university, old churches, Roman bath, Hippodrome, an old town. The city sits on the Gulf so has a nice promenade. to sit and watch the people and sunset. There were some signs of the economic woes of Greece but overall it was not bad. The food was scrumptious.
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| White tower (no longer white) which was a prison not long ago |
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| Church of the Orphan Stephen. Smallest church in Greece. |
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Awil....some of your brothers on the streets selling every color sneaker imaginable.
I didn't take a photo of the Hippodrome. This was the scene of chariot races. In 390 AD, Emperor Theodosius The Great was mad that the fans lynched his friend who banned some chariot racer from participating. So, he had 7,000 fans killed. It seems they never had the stomach to return to the ensuing chariot scene and so it feel into disuse.
Market scenes
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| Gyro, anyone? Is this what it looks like in the kitchen of Ali Baba? |
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| Peter meets and talks with an Albanian working in the store |
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Like Berlin, Graffiti is "in"
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| It looked like owners paid young people to paint on their walls |
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| This is a 600 year old church and ancient ruins adored by the artist! |
Our trip around one of three peninsulas just south of Thessaloniki
On the trip home we stopped at Lake Prespa, bordered by Macedonia, Albania and Greece
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| Our next trip is to Lake Prespa for a weekend in May |
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| Back to Albania and Lake Orchid on the way home |
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