Catting Around In Thessaloniki 

Thessaloniki is Greece’s second largest city and a major port along the northern coast. Like most of Greece, it’s filled with ancient ruins, graffiti, interesting history, and cats. While the city center is at sea level, rising behind it are hills with old fortresses and crumbling city walls to explore. These hills have many spots with great views of the metro area, the bay, and plenty of cats. When we weren’t climbing above the city, we spent a lot of time walking next to the bay. A long, wide promenade leads south from downtown hugging the coast. It’s a very popular place to walk, run, or cycle past the enterprising buskers, hobby fisherman, and canoodling couples. Combined with a few nice museums, a nearby national park, and mild weather, we felt Thessaloniki was a great place to spend a couple of winter months.

Cats Galore!

There are SO MANY cats in Thessaloniki. They can be found lounging on ruins, hanging out in parks, begging at cafes, and just about everywhere. The vast majority are community cats which don’t belong to anyone, but seem reasonably well cared for nonetheless. Everyone looks out for them. Many of them get fed everyday around the same time, in the same spot, and by the same people. It was pretty easy to determine where and when that was, as we’d sometimes see a couple of dozen cats patiently waiting for their dinner to arrive.

They are mostly fed kibble, and people often leave large piles of dry food around town. But we saw them get treats of fish scraps and chicken too. A couple of our neighbors would bring fish heads and bones out on a dinner plate, bringing the nearby cats sprinting over. We also watched a woman disseminating meat from multiple whole chickens to several dozen cats in the cemetery one day. 

Because of the large amount of people feeding them, they aren’t fully feral. Still, most are pretty skittish and they are wary about getting too close to overeager tourists. We spent a lot of time trying to cajole them into a petting session, though our success rate was not great. I’d estimate that we were successful in less than 5% of our attempts. But considering the massive number of chances, even a success rate of a few percent turned into a lot of new friends.

Flamingos

Our host happened to work at the nearby Axios Delta National Park and told us that the Kalochori Lagoon section serves as a year round home to flamingos. It’s a little outside of town, but still accessible by city bus. To be frank, the bus ride to the park is not pretty. The route goes through an industrial wasteland consisting of a handful of working factories that are outnumbered by abandoned and dilapidated port buildings. The bleak scenery served to really lower my expectations during the ride over. But once we made it into the park and found the lagoon with the flamingos, things turned around. There were hundreds of them! I don’t know what I imagined, but it certainly wasn’t that. They were mostly on the far side of the lagoon where no footpaths existed, so it was hard to see them but it was still pretty neat. And the views of the nearby mountains and the city back over the bay were impressive as well.

When we returned for the second time, the flamingos were feeding much closer to the walking path and we were able to get almost right up next to them. Standing there and listening to them constantly honk while they meandered around was really entertaining. Watching them fly was even better. Unlike most birds, they don’t tuck their legs when flying. Instead they stick their legs straight out behind them. Combined with their extraordinary long neck out in front, they appear like massive sticks with wings when in the air. Despite the super long necks, loud calls, and odd leg placement, they actually land very gracefully. That might be the only graceful thing about them though. This was the first time we had seen flocks of flamingos in the wild and it was pretty neat.

Coastal promenade 

There’s a paved coastal pathway that runs south from downtown along the bay. It’s a good place to find mountain views, locals getting their steps in, kids riding bikes, and old men fishing. As you can probably guess, there are several spots with cats, usually next to the old men fishing. Adjacent to the promenade are a handful of small parks, playgrounds, and tennis courts. The path also has plenty of benches to sit and stare out at the sea or people passing by. We walked this 2 mile stretch at least a dozen times during our stay.

Holy Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius

Set back a bit from the coastal promenade was the Holy Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius. This worship building had the most interesting architecture of any of them in the city. It’s not a large building, but it certainly felt unique. Nonetheless, we didn’t even notice it the first couple of times we strolled along the promenade because we were too busy staring at the water. Luckily, we walked the route enough times that we were able to look around a bit more and find this place.

Old City Walls

Rising up from a couple of spots near the bay and converging at a fortress atop the hills are the ancient city walls. We found it enjoyable to climb the hills while following these walls. It seemed like the higher elevation, the better preservation, so going up definitely made it more interesting. They were inconsistently built over the years with a hodgepodge of stone types and shapes. Following them leads to an old Byzantine fortress, the Heptapyrgion, great views of the bay, and of course, cats.

Urban Hiking

There are a lot of good walking areas in Thessaloniki, especially up into the hills. Much of it is just urban hiking consisting of climbing through tiny lanes and taking “roads” that are really just staircases. But there are also several parts of the city that are tan patches on Google Maps which are actually parks with lots of winding trails. (Normally, parks are designated as green.) To the northeast especially are nice places to hike around and get good views of the city. They aren’t too crowded and have plenty of trees, so that makes them good birdwatching areas as well. Among the birds we spotted during our hikes was a Syrian Woodpecker, which was a first for us.

Modern Art Museum

The Modern Art Museum in Thessaloniki is located well outside of the downtown tourist area, so I don’t think it gets very many visitors, especially in the offseason. And that’s a real shame because it was outstanding! The highlight of our visit was a comprehensive lesson on Russian avant-garde art history covering the 3 decades from 1900-1930 before Stalinism took hold. When that happened, much of the artwork was destroyed due to the implementation of conformist ideology.

The art that did survive is pretty fascinating. Their large collection is one of the foremost in the world and covers several boundary-pushing styles for the time like cubism, suprematism, constructivism, and futurism. And they have multiple extensive placards with informative descriptions of these styles (in English). I didn’t know much about this era prior to visiting but I certainly learned a lot. I don’t feel like I got many good pictures as almost all of the paintings were behind glass, but it didn’t diminish the in person experience.

Archaeological Museum

While there are plenty of archaeological remnants accessible throughout town, the best examples are being preserved in the Archaeological Museum. It’s laid out in chronological order starting with the remaining traces of the earliest known human settlements in the area and moving through the ages. If you are into ancient Greek statues, reliefs, mosaics, and other antiquities, this is the place to find the best of them.

Rotunda

The ancient round domed building in the center of old town is the Rotunda. Preserved over centuries of differing rule and several major earthquakes, the Rotunda is an historical marvel. It’s about as interesting as a single empty room can be. The ceiling has a dozen large painted frescoes and mosaics, which show their age, but also help to increase the aura of the place. If it were fully restored, I don’t think it would have the same connectedness to the past. While it doesn’t take long to visit, I thought it was definitely worth it.

Where We Stayed

We rented a one bedroom apartment about halfway up the hill in a local neighborhood. It was a 15 minute walk to the downtown area and another 10 minutes to the coastal promenade. The bed was great and the kitchen was really well stocked. It even had a super sharp knife, which is almost unheard of in an Airbnb. I wish the couch would’ve been more comfortable, but it was a nice place for the most part. We paid $3117 for our 55 night stay, which comes out to $57/night.

What We Spent

I don’t think Thessaloniki is all that expensive of a destination, although our spending was higher than normal. The main driver of this increase is that we paid cash instead of using airline miles for our flight from the US. All of the options using miles were terrible, so we decided to save those points for another time and just fork over the almost $1200 it took to get there.

We also both went to the dermatologist for routine skincare checkups. We found a Harvard educated doctor who provided a solid experience at an extremely reasonable price. For just $319, we received two checkups, a follow up for the removal of one mole, and a test for cancerous cells. No worries, it was negative.

Combined, the flight and dermatologist visits cost us an extra $1500 over what we’d normally spend. So while our total spending came out to be $6386 or $116/day, it would’ve been less than $90/day if we’d have used miles and avoided the doctor.

With plenty of good views, a friendly populace, and mild weather, Thessaloniki was a great winter stop. We were able to be quite active and took advantage of the urban hiking and coastal promenade access. It was fun to see the ruins scattered everywhere and interspersed into the everyday life of the locals. Each of the museums we visited were well done and we both really enjoyed the national park and its flocks of flamingos. And the plentiful cats only served to enhance our pleasant winter stay on the northern Greek coast.