After Meteora, we arrived in Thessaloniki and stayed at a lovely little boutique hotel called the Blue Bottle. Thessaloniki has an interesting vibe. It’s definitely not Europe– of the places I’ve been, I’d say it felt very Balkan with a bit of Tel Aviv mixed in. The city has been Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Greek through the course of its history. The visit piqued my interest sufficiently to order a book all about the history of Thessaloniki, now I just have to find the time to read it..
Many of the Greeks who live in and around Thessaloniki are descendants of Greeks who were displaced from Asia Minor (i.e., Turkey) after the 1927 Lausanne Convention. That convention displaced nearly 2 million Greeks from Turkey and Turks (well, Muslims) from Greece in an officially-sanctioned population exchange. I would say that is unimaginable today, but Cyprus went through its own UN-facilitated population transfer (which was much, much smaller) in 1975.
One of the nice things about Thessaloniki is that the city has been re-engineered a bit to have a few broad avenues running perpendicular to the sea up to the hills. Our food tour guide explained to us that this was to open up pathways for a breeze from the sea to cool the city as well as let everyone enjoy uninterrupted views of the sea.
The city walls that fortify Thessaloniki date to 390 AD. Some of them were demolished by the Ottomans, but there are many still standing in the hills above the downtown area. The breeze at the top of the hills was absolutely lovely, but after reconnoitering a bit we couldn’t find a food or drink establishment that looked worthy of our money…so we just walked around and admired the fortifications:
We had planned on taking a taxi back into town, but since it was literally all downhill from where we were, we just let gravity do the work and walked down staircases and narrow alleys in the residential area.