Thessaloniki

Sorry that my blogs have been infrequent lately. The end of the semester has crept up on me and attacked me with finals and papers. Because I know I don't like to read for a really long time, I decided that I'd post more than once so that you can keep track of my travels and adventures a little easier. So, the second half of Lauren and my Spring Break was spent in Thessaloniki. We headed over on Sunday the 12th of April by plane. We forgot that it was Easter Sunday, so we didn't get the chance to attend a service in a church there. On the 13th it was a cloudy and rainy day. We tried to find the Museum of Bzyantine Instruments but we got lost and ended up in this sketchy part of town. Lauren didn't really want to do much since it was raining so we spent the rest of the day in our hotel room. On the 14th, it was raining again but this time I insisted that we do something. So we decided to head out to the Byzantine Baths. The only problem is that in Thess. there seems to be very few people who speak english, so when we told the cabbie where we wanted to go, he took us out to what felt like the middle of nowhere. We ended up near the monastary and the Byzantine Wall. We decided to take a chance and ask for directions at a restraunt. As soon as the one person who spoke english translated what we had asked into Greek, the family that owned the business all began arguing in Greek about how to get there. None of them were pointing in the same direction. As I was trying to contain my laughter at this one of the elderly ladies pulled me aside and began giving me directions in Greek, using big actions to demonstrate what she was saying. I think she then asked something along the lines of "Do you understand?" and I simply nodded my head, not knowing what she has asked. She never repeated the directions (so I'm assuming she asked something like that) and simply stared up at me smiling and patting me on the back. At this point Lauren and I had pretty much given up trying to directions, so we attempted to follow the directions the lady had given us. Somehow we ended up back in the city centre. We ended up at this place called the "Rotunda" which was kind of cool to go inside and see. Then we headed down toward the beach to find the White Tower. Much to our disappointment, the White Tower wasn't even white. We climbed to the top and took some pictures, but again, it was cloudy and rainy so the view probably wasn't as beautiful as it could have been. On the 15th Lauren and I both woke up feeling sick so "we" decided to stay in the hotel. I woke with red eyes, a horrible cough and a stuffy nose. I figured I could deal with that in order to do some sightseeing but I wasn't really wild about walking around Thess. by myself. On the 16th, "we", as in me, forced us to do some sightseeing since it was our last day in Thess. We went to the Galerius Palace which was simply just a bunch of ruins, but it was cool to check out and to be able to use the imagination to see what the rooms looked like. We then spent the rest of the day doing some shopping and just wandering around. Lauren gave me some allergy medicine, since I think I'm allergic to smoking and apparently it knocked me out. We woke up early the next so that we could catch the train back to Athens. We were excited to see the beautiful Greek countryside, but we instead actually ended up sleeping for most of the 5 hour train ride back. Then we caught our airplane and headed back to London. We came back on Friday and most people didn't come back until Sunday, so I was able to sleep in and work on homework in peace on Saturday. Well, that's all for Greece.