This is a travel blog about an incredible vacation we spent in Greece. Our itinerary of mainland and islands gave us a very diverse experience - from the frenetic capital Athens, to the austere monasteries of Meteora and historical ruins of Ancient Delphi - to jewels of the Cyclades and a finalé in stylish Thessaloniki.
For the first time, we used a travel agent because trying to book everything ourselves was proving to be too difficult. Sandra at Aegean Thesaurus was a great help with accommodating our wants and needs. And it made the entire travel experience stress-free. We got ourselves to Athens and then they took over from there.
The first day of traveling was a wash and completely draining but all worth it for the dirt cheap price. We flew Malev Airlines to Budapest and after a long layover (but not long enough to leave the airport) we then flew to Thessaloniki and arrived in the wee hours of the morning. The terminal we spent 4 hours in was small and half of the shops were closed. It was very quiet and only a handful of people were around while we watched Hal Hartley's "Trust" on the video ipod after eating crappy, dry pizza.
We arrived in Thessaloniki at 1:30am and took a cab to a nearby hotel. The taxi driver spoke English and couldn't understand why were were traveling to Greece in October. He thought we were odd for wanting to come after the tourist season. He said, "In the summer, these streets are so crowded with people I couldn't even drive here." he also said it was cold even though it was in the 70s and humid now, at 2:00am. Sounded like a nightmare to us so we felt absolutely confident we booked at the perfect time of year.
He got lost and his GPS wasn't recognizing our hotel's address and never turned off the meter. We were completely overcharged and after finally finding the hotel (after he got a good laugh at it) it was 2:30am and we were relieved to get out of his taxi.
Finally, we were getting to sleep about 3am when distant rumblings could be heard and a full blown thunder and lightning storm ensued and kept us up in a hallucinatory semi-awake state. The wake-up call at 9am was harsh but we needed to get some breakfast and then return to the airport to fly to Athens!