Done Worse

Today’s adventure required far less driving as we went to the city of Thessaloniki (~30-40 minute drive from Kilkis). Kostas drove around for a bit so we could see the old parts of the city (which are required to be built keeping with traditional style). We also saw the remnants of the wall which surrounded the original city during the Byzantine.

We then went to the university (where Kostas is a professor) and saw the art museum. They had a really amazing display of prints- both from stone and from wood. Not too surprisingly many of the topics seemed to relate to Greek Gods and mountains. Just like Minnesota! 🙂

From there we walked around the rainy city and visited a rotunda, and walked around the grounds where there are additional old ruins. Kostas told me that every time they try to dig under the city for construction, they find more ruins, and construction screeches to a halt until the city figures out what to do next. They had apparently started digging for a metro system and found amazing ruins, so the project, which was supposed to be done this year, is currently on hold and is now projected to be done in 2017, which Kostas doesn’t believe will happen either. We also saw the Galerius entrance with its elaborate sculptures.

We also visited the historic white tower. We were hoping to do lots of walking, but the weather did not agree with us, as it started pouring. It’s actually rained a lot the whole trip — which is great for the lush green landscapes, but not so fun for the walking. Fortunately, we were able to stop for a delicious lunch and get ice cream afterwards. Despite the fact that Greek food is SUPER DELICIOUS in my opinion, AJ has not been too happy with it. He thinks it all looks weird or tastes weird, and he’s just not having it. I was telling Katerina that they promote the “Mediterranean diet” in the US and I now understand why it works so well: you look at the food, decide it’s disgusting and eat nothing. The weight just falls off!

On the topic of food: Ermis the four year old LOVES tzatziki (the Greek dish of yogurt, cucumbers, garlic, salt and olive oil). I mean the kid LOVES it. K&K would order a plate for the table to share, Ermis would see it, grab the serving spoon and shovel it down before any of us could get near it. And the looks we got if we made towards it were enough for us to keep our distance. We started asking waiters to give us the plate first and would distract him while the rest of us stole a scoop before he spied it, demanded it, and vacuumed it up. It became kind of a joke — did we think Ermis might like some tzatziki with his meal???

We finally figured out we needed to order 2 plates: one for Ermis and one for the rest of us- provided we hid it behind some other food out of his line of sight. AJ caught on to the massive tzatziki consumption and commented: “boy that Ermis sure loves Suzuki!!”

Greek yogurt dish/Japanese method of teaching kids how to play music/motorcycles – close enough.