Wednesday, June 15 - Thessaloniki, Greece

Nothing like a good night's sleep to make you ready to take on the city of Thessaloniki! 

Our day today started out with a visit to the Thessaloniki City Hall to visit the mayor and have a lecture by a professor for Thessaloniki.  However, as we learned, because of the general strike in the city (and later a huge rain and hailstorm) our plans for the day completely changed.

We did make it to City Hall, but neither the professor or the mayor were able to join us.  However, the vice-mayor and the mayor's excuetive director both talked with us at length and we learned much about Greek's education system as well as Greek's agriculture and immigration and the poltical invovlement in each.


City Hall at Thessaloniki



Liza, Dunn, the Vice Mayor, and Jeremy

Then we were supposed to go to the Byzantine Museum, but it was closed because of the strike. However, the museum we were supposed to visit Thursday was open, so we headed to the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki.  I LOVE archaeology and I was able to see items from the 300-400's BC!  Crazy!  We saw Greek artifacts from the original Greek rule, then from during the Roman time, and then during the Macedonia time.  This museam has one of the largest collections of gold artifacts from anicent Greek.  The gold crowns specifically caught my attention and I had to buy a book to take home!

Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki

Me at the Marble Tomb outside the museum

See the middle piece of the pieces in the middle?  Well, that is a good piece of jewelry that they buried ancient Greeks with.  Guess where it was put?  Over their mouths!

A gold crown!

Dice from 350 BC

Another gold crown!

And one more!

  Then we headed into a rainstorm which interfereed with our outside plans, so we went to lunch a little early at Yedi Coule.  The courses and options just kept coming and coming!  So rich!  So yummy!  This was a shadow puppet that was on one of the walls.  I can't wait to learn more about this tradition.

A shadow puppet

Then, the rain stopped, and we were able to go visit the remains of the original city wall, the Seven Towers of the Keep, and the Chain Tower.

The Seven Towers of the Keep



The Seven Towers of the Keep




The View of Thessaloniki and the Aegan Sea from the Chain Tower



Me at the Chain Tower

Then we visited one oldest and largest early Christian churches.  (Only a church in Istanbul and the Vatacian are larger!)  The church is called St. Demetrius church and it is the only 5-column early Christian church in existance today.  It was breathtakingly beautiful.  It is still in regular use today.  The original church was built around 400 AD and then went through 5-7 major reconstructions throughout history.

St. Demetrius Church

Can you see the four rows of columns making 5 sections of the church?

St. Demetrius

Then we headed down to see some Roman ruins.  There was a small part of the original theater space as well as a Roman Market.  The market was especially cool as our tour guide explained all the details of what shopping in Roman rule days would have been like for the Greeks.



The Roman Theater




The Roman Marketplace



A close-up of where the Greek's shopped during the time of Roman rule!

Because of the rain and protests, we ended up with a two hour window of free time and since I love you so much, I've spent it catching up with my blog!  Enjoy!

PS - Sorry about spelling errors.  I can't get spelling check to work and it's just going to have to go out as a first draft!