Drive from Gallipoli to Thessaloniki was a 6 hour long hot-car-a-thon, including another hour spent in border crossing (hopefully our last as we are now permanently back into the EU), sweltering slightly but we made it all worthwhile by purchasing 2L of scotch and 1L of jager from duty free for $40. Eventually found ourselves winding up through the complex system of tiny one way back streets in Thessaloniki to our next hostel, "Studios Arabas", a very cool little hostel run by a little Greek woman called Dorra, who was lovely and gave us free cold drinks on arrival, showed us where everything was and each night would offer us Greek wine and insisted on being called "Mumma" as she saw herself as everyone's mother while her sons are off travelling themselves.
Settled in and walked down the hill to get ourselves some Euros (finally we are back to a single currency again, no more miscellaneous funbucks) and then try a Gyros, which is essentially kebab meat, tomato, onion, tatziki and fries wrapped in a pita bread... pretty much the best kebab ever.
Spent the evening outside the front of the hostel, drink duty free Jameson and sprite and hanging out with a couple of dutch girls, a couple of dutch guys and an older American with bullet scars and a missing leg.
Woke up feeling great, the hostel gave free coffee and amazing homemade jam for breakfast so we grabbed some bread and had ourselves a feast and then spent the morning relaxing in the shade and redoing our itinerary to fit in a couple of places and avoid a couple of others. We also began our ordeal of being unable to comprehend the Greek ferry system, whose timetables change weekly and aren't available in a unified website.
At about 3 we sucked it up and braved the heat to go for a walk into the city centre and see the sights. Made our way down and stumbled upon a section of the old city wall (as in, over 2000 years old) down the first road we took. Went further in and checked out a more intact and scenic part of the wall in a park, next to Aristoteles University and its huge philosophy building. From there we visited the "Rotunda", a big, old, circular (funnily enough) building and the nearby churches and then headed through the ancient city gate to the "Forum of Thessaloniki". The Forum is an amazing square section of ruins of what used to be the heart of ancient Greek Thessaloniki, and features a bunch of intact columns, big amphitheatre, a set of buildings and a trio of big, angry black guard dogs.
Got back to the hostel about 6, had much needed showers and "borrowed" Lewis' laptop to go outside and update blog while the others faffed around. Finished just as Lewis and Macky joined me, and we were soon after joined by Kenny, a really cool Irishman, Alice, Jenny and Emma from England and the two dutch girls from the previous night, Lilian and Sunna. Had a bunch of drinks with them, got given pasta salad and home grown olives by Dorra along with some strong, clear, non-ouzo Greek liquor because she "loves us all" then at 10 we moved to our dorm for drinking games to keep from offending the neighbours any more and escape the rampant mosquito menace.
Played a couple of rounds of kings, adding a rule from the English girls called Paranoid, which involves the person who starts it whispering the person to their left a question (for example: "who do you think most likely to have an STD?" or "which person do you find most attractive") and that person then does the same to the person who the answer is (the question's answer must be one of the people playing) and repeat the process three times, the final person pointing to their answer and that person drinking. People can also finish their drink to hear what a question was. After kings we just played a bunch of paranoid then headed down to the waterfront at about midnight to try the vaunted, "top 5 cities in the word according to Lonely Planet", nightlife, which ended up being a small number of over-priced clubs.
Unsatisfied by this turn we found a street vendor selling $1.50 beers and acquired several bags worth before heading back towards the hostel. We stopped just at the bottom of the road because we didn't want to annoy the people at the hostel (drunk us apparently disregarding the locals we were then around instead) and ended up playing a rather interesting game of truth or dare, joined by 2 dutch guys from the hostel, which climaxed with Macky dancing the wavey-gravy for 5 minutes on a street corner while someone else tried to run up a wall and myself, Kenny and Emma sat naked in the back of an unfortunately parked (for its owner) ute with a dutch guy and Jenny also half naked outside it.
Woke up feeling surprisingly perky, seemingly because Lewis got both our hangovers combined, and realised that we hadn't actually booked our accomodation for that night so frantically remedied that, had breakfast and checked out just before cut off or Dorra, who was angry as two Canadian girls had left at 5am to avoid paying for the stays, would have probably cracked the shits at us. As it was after checkout we were not allowed to sit in the hostel so sat outside in the street while Lewis dealt with his emails and with feeling up for being in a car.
Drive to Athens took 7 hours, stopping only once for a detour to a "seaside archaeological site" that signed us up a dirt track which ended at a wooden shack halfway up a hill so we backtracked to the side of the Mediteranean where we made manwiches (a third of a tin of spam each with some spicy ketchup) before continueing on.
Checked in to "Aristoteles Hotel", an actual hotel as it was cheap and we hadn't got many options due to lack of pre-planning but was a good change of pace to have a room to ourselves, with air conditioning! The hotel was fairly standard, but had leaflets up saying to ask the staff if we required help with ferry bookings, which we did, so I asked and was told to "go and find a tourist information point".
Had a quiet night watching TV before the long day we planned next.
Woke up and availed ourselves of the complimentary breakfast of a hardboiled egg, single slice of cheese and ham and bread and jam then left the hotel surprisingly efficiently to get our tourist sightseeing underway.
I had planned a rough route through the sites we wished to see and expertly guided us first to an unknown large green patch on the map which turned out to be an awesome set of ruins of one of the main entrances to ancient Athens and included the site of Plato's Academy which was cool. We explored the site for a couple of hours, got yelled and whistle blown at for Macky and I riding a potentially priceless lion statue (put up signs if you don't want your lions ridden!) and then moved on towards the Acropolis.
Faced by the fact that the Acropolis is up a big hill and we were hot we bypassed it temporarily to find a place for lunch and then, with all of us refreshed and Lewis and myself fortified by a half jug of wine each, we braved the hill. The Acropolis site is amazing, a series of impressively preserved and spectacular buildings and artifacts coupled with breathtaking views out over the whole of Athens, which is obscenely big. Macky added the Acropolis to his list of major landmarks he has licked and we also checked out the Theatre of Dionysos, Greek God of wine and joy... best god ever.
After about an hour of Acropolis examination we moved on down to a big government building which looked cool on the map but wasn't really worth the 5 minute detour it cost us aside from the 10 minute lie down in the shade in the park outside it which refreshed us enough (it was really hot, ok?) to check out another big, awesome columned ruin, where we found it interesting that a 2000 year old clay pot was being used as a washing basin for peoples feet (great work Greece, real respectful).
We then headed back to the Acropolis to make the 6pm walking tour, but got there at 5 in order to explore the site around its base, which was a lot more cool ruins and a fully restored, long thin columned building.
Waited until 6:15 at the location for the start of the tour then gave up on the guide actually showing up and went back to the hotel for dinner and a much needed beer and chill out.
Athens is very awesome but can be pretty much fully done in a single solid day.
Next morning got up, breakfasted and checked out by 10 for the drive up the Greek west coast to Igoumenitsa. Arrived at the ticket booth for ferries at 4:02 to find the ferry times were 4 or 5:30 so got tickets for the 5:30 ferry (to Corfu), chilled out in a cafe for an hour, grabbed our backs and left Cumu sitting on the side of the road outside the port then jumped onto the ferry.
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