November 2-8, 2024

I was surprised when I overheard Dan tell someone that he was taking the first week of November off.

Oh? Really? This is news to me.

Dan hadn’t made any plans – he just knew that he was taking a week off from work. I was able to get the time off as well – now what to do? It was a poor time of year for a motorcycle trip. And hiking or other “outdoor” activity would be grey and possibly damp. But then, with a little bit of brainstorming, we concluded that a week in November would be the ideal time to visit a place that it normally too hot for us to want to visit. In this case, that place was “Greece”.

We know very little about Greece other than what we hear from friends and travel sites, but we opted for the lesser-known Thessaloniki. It was a direct flight, and shouldn’t be as crowded as Athens. That was enough for us and we ran with it.

And this is where this little write-up will differ from my usual process. Normally I go day-by-day, describing what we say with each coming sunrise. But because this trip was a lot of back-and-forth, and even repetition, I decided to break it up into different sections. regardless of the days things took place. So here goes!

– General Thoughts
– Cats
– Ruins/Museums
– Forest walk
– Transportation

The flight out was at o’dark thirty on Saturday morning, with the alarm starting the day at 4:30. Ugh – whose idea was this? But the flight was quick and uneventful, and the views as we crossed over Croatia were amazing, reminding me how much I want to explore the area further by motorcycle. “Next time”, I suppose!

Our hostel, “Zeus is Loose” was easily reachable by public bus and they let us drop off our bags, with an early check in coming a little bit later. We handed our bags over and took off to get a first glimpse of Thessoloniki!

Our hostel room

And the view….

The view from the common room was better