thessaloniki, greece

we woke up at about 10am the next day and maria had breakfast ready for us. bread, feta, boiled eggs and juice, so yum. maria had rang the airport and our luggage had been found alive and well but still in HK airport. they told us it should be here by tomorrow morning, we were stoked. we had packed a spare change of clothes in our carry on luggage but because we knew we probably wouldnt have our luggage we had saved it for this morning!
rolled up our pants for the 35 degree heat and took off with uncle nick to the centre of the city. thessaloniki is such a great city. im so happy i had a reason to go there otherwise i never would have seen it. it's a little smaller than melbourne and has a very simple layout so we got our bearings pretty quickly.
uncle nick was our private guide. he was so great, he's a funny man and really took great care of us. he took us first to the classical museum and had some lessons on alexander the great and all the greek gods. it was so fascinating. he told us that wherever you go in greece you only have to dig 2 feet down and you'll find something from thousands of years ago. everyone is just used to it!
we saw these amzing scultures and ancient mosiacs. they were incredible! mosaic is a greek word.
then we went over the byzantine museum. this musem was from the time when paul the apostle came and made the first churches in thessaloniki and the people turned away from the greek gods and became christian. obviously me and jus were so interested, they even had a handwritten gospel from 3rd century AD. they also had these paintings on rock of all these bible stories like daniel in the lion's den, and abraham and isaac.
from the museum we went into the main street of thessaloniki. nick took us to a really nice restaurant called tiffany's for a late lunch. we asked him to order for us which he took very seriously! he ordered so much food! all traditional greek food, so me and jus were in heaven. i think we sat there for about 3 hours eating. all around greece the cities have stray cats and dogs but they are all collared and taken care of by the public. it's really cool, there dogs and cats just wandering around and they all extremely used to people, so you can go and have a pat, but they don't belong to anyone. i think this would work very well for the cats. they just decide where they want to be, they might come and stay at your house for a night and then be on their way. every cat i passed i had to scratch its ears.
after lunch we went back home to have a snooze, it was about 6pm and when justine got up again at 8pm i couldnt get up. so i slept through until morning! jet lag really wasnt a problem for us because we'd had 40 hours travelling time to get our bodies in sync with greece time.
the next day we were waiting expectantly for our luggage to arrive. we rang the airport only to find our bags were STILL in HK. this was the first time i thought i would cry! i was hot and all my clothes were dirty and i wanted my stuff!!!! looked at our insurance documents and discovered we had $500 to spend on essential clothes if our bags were delayed. so nick took us back to the centre to go shopping!
shopping depressed me though! only found one tshirt and and one skirt i liked. almost cried in a shop and then justine's visa wouldn't work and we thought then bank had cancelled it on her and so we had to laugh again. it felt like anything that could go wrong was going wrong!
Nick aborted the shopping expedition and took us back to Tiffany's for lunch again. he ordered again but all new food. i love eating more than anything else so it cheered me up. THEN, maria called during lunch - the airport had called her and told her our bags were in London! we were stoked, London was so much closer than HK and we felt very confident that London would be organised and get them to us quickly. after lunch we wandered around Thessaloniki for a while longer, it honestly is such a beautiful city. we walked down to the waterfront and had a chocolate granite there. the sea comes right up to a wall and on top of the wall in the footpath. its really cool, there's no beach or anything, its just footpath, then ocean. along the waterfront is this ancient tower called white tower which is the icon of thessaloniki. they used to decaptitate people and hang the heads over the sides of the tower and the blood would drain down the sides of the tower. nice, hey? by this time we had been shopping for 8 hours and uncle nick was still keen to keep going but just and i were exhausted. so we headed back home.
justine's yaya lives in a little village to the north east of the city called panorama. from the city we had to take a freeway back and forth. greece has a higher death toll on its roads than anywhere in the world and i totally understand why. they are all nutcases. uncle nick told us that greece has the same road rules as australia but because everyone is breaking the rules the police can't really enforce it! i think the rules are more guidelines. the taxi we were in had seatbelts but nothing to clip them into so i was hangin onto the loose seatbelt for dear life.
when we got home we rang athens airport and asked them to hold on the luggages (thats what nick and maria say, luggages) until we went back to athens the next day, rather that getting them to send them up to thessaloniki. that night i rang my mum and used the prepaid credit i had bought but only got up to telling her about london before it cut me off!!