This morning, we woke up super early to catch our flight from Rome to Thessaloniki! (aka we left our hostel at 7AM) Took a shuttle bus from the train station to Ciampino airport, this tiny little budget airport that mostly just flies Ryanair. If you didn't know already, Ryanair has huge discounts on flights but is pretty much a money-sucker in every other way. (ie: You have to pay a fee for online check-in, because they don't even have a check-in at the airport, and you have to print your own boarding pass, and you have to pay a freaking fortune just to check a bag >.<) I ended up paying the same cost as my ticket to check my bag! (But they also have super strict carry-on restrictions so there's no way I could have gotten around it with all the stuff I had haha) And for our flight, they actually made people verify that their carry-on's fit into their measuring containers prior to boarding!
Other than boarding late and then taking off later than planned, we had a fine flight to Thessaloniki. But once we got into Greece, holy crap was it a shock to see Greek letters everywhere in place of our English alphabet! Stephanie and I were soooo confused trying to make sense of the Greek... haha. On the plus side, almost everyone we've talked to here speaks English, and their English is really good! Whooo things won't be totally hopeless!
So we got to Thessaloniki at around 2PM, and our flight to Santorini wasn't until 9:30PM, so we decided to kill time by going to into the city to explore. Apparently it's the 2nd largest city in Greece, and also considered somewhat of a co-capital, since it rose to prominence in the Byzantine times. We took a bus that ran from the airport to the international bus station, but we were sooo confused once they started naming stops, because the one we wanted to get off at (Y.M.C.A) didn't show up on the broadcast. Sooo we basically took a bus tour through the city and rode the bus all the way until the end of the line haha. Then we decided to just board again and ride it back, in hopes of being able to recognize the stop on the way back (it takes a slightly different route on the way back to the airport). We ended up getting off where we wanted, at the White Tower, which actually was not that impressive at all. Stephanie was super hungry, so we found a cute little Greek restaurant to eat at! (But no idea what it's called) I ordered what I thought was a "salad" but ended up being some boiled vegetables with tomatoes, and the garlic bread we shared had olives and anchovies on it! Afterwards we were both a little hesitant about how much we would like Greek food during our stay.... >.< (Other than gyros haha)
Our flight to Santorini was super quick, only 1 hour, and our hotel had a shuttle to pick us up from the airport! It's so nice to have a private hotel room again! And we finally get to sleep in tomorrow!
SO cute. At the duty free shop in Rome.
The amazing things you see in the bathroom!
Other than boarding late and then taking off later than planned, we had a fine flight to Thessaloniki. But once we got into Greece, holy crap was it a shock to see Greek letters everywhere in place of our English alphabet! Stephanie and I were soooo confused trying to make sense of the Greek... haha. On the plus side, almost everyone we've talked to here speaks English, and their English is really good! Whooo things won't be totally hopeless!
So we got to Thessaloniki at around 2PM, and our flight to Santorini wasn't until 9:30PM, so we decided to kill time by going to into the city to explore. Apparently it's the 2nd largest city in Greece, and also considered somewhat of a co-capital, since it rose to prominence in the Byzantine times. We took a bus that ran from the airport to the international bus station, but we were sooo confused once they started naming stops, because the one we wanted to get off at (Y.M.C.A) didn't show up on the broadcast. Sooo we basically took a bus tour through the city and rode the bus all the way until the end of the line haha. Then we decided to just board again and ride it back, in hopes of being able to recognize the stop on the way back (it takes a slightly different route on the way back to the airport). We ended up getting off where we wanted, at the White Tower, which actually was not that impressive at all. Stephanie was super hungry, so we found a cute little Greek restaurant to eat at! (But no idea what it's called) I ordered what I thought was a "salad" but ended up being some boiled vegetables with tomatoes, and the garlic bread we shared had olives and anchovies on it! Afterwards we were both a little hesitant about how much we would like Greek food during our stay.... >.< (Other than gyros haha)
Cute menu! (the name of the restaurant is that big thing at the top haha)
Afterwards we stopped at a bakery, where I bought a tart and Steph bought a mini cake, although mine was just OK, and Steph complained that hers was too sweet (it ended up being all mousse instead of cake). Bored and out of things to do, we decided to just catch the next bus back to the airport! So overall, not a great first impression of Thessaloniki... haha. BUT one redeeming factor: The Thessaloniki airport has FREE WIFI! Which is pretty much the only reason we survived our long layover! (And how I've been able to catch up on writing)
My peach tart!
Our flight to Santorini was super quick, only 1 hour, and our hotel had a shuttle to pick us up from the airport! It's so nice to have a private hotel room again! And we finally get to sleep in tomorrow!
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