Thessaloniki, Igoumanitsa and Ancona

Up at 7 this morning, Clive made us a cuppa and went out on the balcony to drink it, the apartment was great for a one night break and we will give Aris the owner a good review when we get internet again after all the worry he went through yesterday

Went for a 2 hour walk around Thessaloniki this morning very nice too. Walked along the sea front past all the little bistros and cafes facing the sea down to the little castle at the end of the pier and back again. We had a soy latte in a quaint seaside bistro it was amazing, we dont normally buy non dairy milk in Turkey as it is expensive.

Took this pic of toys for our good friend Christopher, he likes model toys, helicopters, trains and barbies.

This was Clives favourite shop

Fantastic fruit and nut shop on the high street couldn’t resist a few pics

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Today I decided to give Clive a little lecture on driving. It went like this…

Number 1 The speed limit is just that, a limit, not a target.

Number 2 Only a fool breaks the 2 second rule, I only mention this rule because whilst driving on the motorway yesterday I could see the speedometer of the car in front and it read 120 kph

Number 3 your hands should be on the wheel at quarter to 3 or 10 to 2 not 25 to 5 or 25 to nothing and the other hand on the gearstick.

I know he appreciated my motoring knowledge from the little cheeky grimacey smile he gave me when I winked knowingly at him, but I didnt get the noise coming from his mouth, I said ‘What’s that noise’ he replied ‘just grinding my teeth dear’ I said ‘well if driving is that stressful you should let me take over more often…..’

The drive through the Greek mountains was amazing, not only because of the beautiful scenery, but also the amazing tunnel system they have in place. We must have driven through around 50 tunnels the longest being three and a half kilometres. All the tunnels are named and each one has the distance on a sign before you enter it. The most impressive one went uphill and downhill in the same tunnel an amazing feat of engineering.

Along with the tunnels there were some extremely high bridges linking one mountain to another all in all an amazing journey. We saw storks flying and a sign for bears but unfortunately didnt see any in real life.

Anyway off to Ingoumanitsa for the ferry. It’s a bit of a dump really, loads of cafes and bars all empty went to get our tickets and the man said I had to go through the Internal gates and Clive was to drive the car and meet me round the back, so needless to say we didnt listen to him and we both went in the car together, no problem a very nice man checked our tickets and the boot of the car and waved us through. Went to park where Rob and Sue told us and the man there said ‘No! You can leave the car but you have to go to the bar’ So we didnt listen to him either and sat in the car for a bit instead.

When we were allowed into the queuing area we set up our table and chairs and prepared a lovely salad much to the amusement of the others in the queue (jealous) and we also downed a bottle of wine and a sangria, very nice too.

Some more pics from today