Working trip to Greece

7th to 14th November
I had to travel to Thessaloniki for an annual meeting for our research project and so we decided to extend the trip and take a few days holiday.
After collecting the hire car which had been delivered to the wrong house, we left for Gatwick at 3am. We arrived at the airport at 6:30 and there were no delays at the airport. We left England in the cold and wet and arrived in Greece in 21 degree sunshine.
We were staying in the centre of the city and so our exploring was mainly just walking around the streets and shops and walking around in the sunshine and along the harbour walls. We were amazed at the number of coffee bars in the city, for a country in economic strife everyone seemed very happy to sit around all day drinking coffee.
There was some very interesting archeology around the city and we enjoyed watching the archeologists on the dig beneath our hotel window.
Even though 3 days were spent working the rest of the time was very enjoyable.
Our overall opinion of the part of Greece that we visited was very noisy;cars hooting their horns at every opportunity and all times of the day and night, mopeds whizzing up and down the pavements. There was also an incredible number of churches - mostly byzantine, and alcoves for burning candles and prayer all over the city - unfortunately we didn't have opportunity to go inside the churches but I suspect they would have been impressive. Finally we had some difficulty finding places to eat. The city was filled with the Greek equivalent of Greggs - OK for lunch but an evening meal was more difficult to find. When we did find a restaurant we generally had it to ourselves as the Greeks do not tend to eat until about 9 or 10 o'clock, but the service was fantastic, with extra drinks and deserts being provided without being ordered.





Oh -they had some fantastic cake shops as well!